中国人均寿命增速有点慢

　　According to the New York Times on November 23, life expectancy in China is rising slowly, despite its economic surge。

　　From 1990 to 2008, life expectancy in China rose 5.1 years, to 73.1, according to a World Bank compilation of United Nations data. Nearly every other big developing country, be it Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia or Iran, had a bigger increase over that span, despite much slower economic growth。

　　Economic growth makes almost any societal problem easier to solve, but growth doesn’t guarantee better lives — or better health — for everyone. That’s been true for centuries. The rate of growth and the kind of growth both matter. If you scan the globe today, you may end up wondering whether any country has landed on the right mix. Europe offers a good life to many people, with generous vacations, parental leaves and health benefits, but its economies have been growing slowly, which is one reason its debts are so onerous. The US grew more quickly than Europe in recent decades, but many of the gains flowed to a small slice of the population。

　　China can sometimes look like the economy of the future, having grown stunningly fast for almost 30 years now, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But it, too, has real problems. Above all, its growth has been uneven. Whether China can switch to a more balanced form of growth, as its leaders have vowed, will obviously have a big effect on the rest of the global economy。

　　As in the Industrial Revolution, many people have left the countryside and poured into crowded cities. Accidents have become common. Obesity is rising. Pollution is terrible。

　　Of course, whatever the problems with China’s boom, it still has significantly improved the lives of its citizens. There is, after all, another large country with unimpressive recent gains in life expectancy, even smaller than China’s. That’s right: the US. Since 1990, we have been passed by Chile, Denmark, Slovenia and South Korea, among others. China is still five years behind us, but it’s gaining。