We hope this Monday hasn’t been a total wreck. Here are some numbers to get your week started.
When it comes to your mortality, every single dollar you make can count. According to a new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association, life expectancy is increasing for the rich, and barely moving for the poor. “The gap in life expectancy between the richest 1 percent and the poorest 1 percent is 15 years for men and 10 years for women,” reported Marketplace’s Dan Gorenstein. And it turns out a gap doesn’t just exist between the rich and the poor, but the poor and the poor. Residents in New York and San Francisco live about five to six years longer than those who have a similar profile in Indiana and Oklahoma.
A feeling of financial hopelessness is an issue in Puerto Rico, a territory that’s $72 billion in debt. There, students have protested against the government for allocating “funds away from their education to pay for unrelated bond payments,” reports Marketplace’s Andy Uhler. Uhler visited Puerto Rico to witness firsthand how the territory’s debt crisis is affecting residents. You can listen to the first part in our series here.
Outside of the U.S. mainland, another region faces a fractured economy. In Venezuela, the bust in oil prices, a scarcity of basic goods and inflation are proving to be a devastating issues. People are buying goods like diapers and formula for babies on the black market up to 60 times the regulated price, says Marketplace’s Scott Tong. Tong’s series on Venezuela, “The Resource Curse,” explores how oil-rich Venezuela ended up with such a miserable economy.
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