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In Brazil, A Disturbingly Persistent Life Expectancy Gap

In Rio, Brazil
In Rio, Brazil

In Brazil, where you're born not only affects how you live, but can also have an enormous impact on how long you'll live. The results of the latest report from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, published in Folha de S. Paulo, show that life expectancy in the country of samba varies from what is typical in Denmark to one closer to a country like Tajikistan, in central Asia.

Conditions in Brazil have improved dramatically over the past century, and with an average life expectancy of 75 years, babies born today can theoretically hope to live 30 years longer than those born in the 1940s. But averages tell only part of the story.

The richer states in southeastern Brazil have a much higher life expectancy — almost 82 years for women born in Santa Catarina, for example. Men in the small northeastern state of Alagoas, meanwhile, aren't expected to live beyond 66, a gap that serves as damning evidence of unequal access to health care across Brazil.

Accidents and violence also disproportionately affect men. According to Folha, a 20-year-old man in the Alagoas state is eight times less likely to reach 25 than a woman of the same age.

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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