If there’s one thing the rest of the world thinks about Americans, it’s “fat.” And with good reason — in 2008, one-third of our population was obese, according to the US Census Bureau’s 2012 Statistical Abstract. Not just overweight, mind you, but the body mass index definition of obese.
Compare that to 24.5% of the UK population, 11.2% of the French and just 3.4% of the Japanese.
On the plus side, smoking has taken a dramatic dive in many industrialized countries. In 1990, 25.5% of the US population smoked daily, compared with just 16.5% in 2009. During the same period, daily smokers in Iceland dropped by half and Denmark cut its number by almost two-thirds.
Perhaps that’s why our life expectancy is at 78.2 years and is expected to go up to 79.5 years by 2020. Think of what that looks like to someone born in Angola, where the life expectancy is 38.5 years. We get two of their lifetimes.
We may live long and live big, but there’s one area where we cover the middle ground. In 2008, US residents saved 2.7% of their household disposable income. That sounds paltry compared to Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden, where residents routinely sock away at least 10% of their income for a rainy day.
But at least the US is doing better than residents of Greece, who, between 2000 and 2006, spent an average of 7.3% more than they took in. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that one. Opa!