Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to return the nation to a time when he believes Americans were healthier. Not so fast, many researchers say.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, often says that when his uncle was president in the early 1960s, Americans were much healthier than they are now. People were thinner and had lower rates of chronic disease, he recalls. Fewer children had autism, allergies or autoimmune diseases.
On Thursday, the Trump administration plans to release a report, with a particular emphasis on children’s health, premised on the idea that we’ve fallen far since this golden era.
But were Americans really healthier back then?
The U.S. population was much younger in the 1960s, at the tail end of the Baby Boom, which complicates comparisons. Only 12.4 percent of the population was 65 or older in 1963, compared with 17.7 percent now. Rates of chronic diseases generally increase with age.
But Americans must be doing something right: Life expectancy has increased. A child born today can expect to live almost a decade longer than a child born in 1960. That’s partly because advances in medical care mean that conditions that were deadly decades ago can be kept in check for longer now.
“If R.F.K. Jr. makes the statement that more people are dying of chronic diseases now than in Jack Kennedy’s era, that’s undoubtedly true — we’ve got twice as many people, and a much larger chunk are old folks who have much higher chronic disease rates,” said Kenneth Warner, dean emeritus of the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
“Does that mean we’re doing worse than back then?” he added. “Absolutely not.”
Americans have put on the pounds over the decades, as Mr. Kennedy often notes. Diabetes and obesity are on the rise even among adolescents. On the other hand, the country has cut back dramatically on smoking, a habit that once contributed to huge numbers of deaths in the United States.
