How Will You Die? The Causes of Death in the U.S. (Infographic)

Death is the permanent cessation of all biological functions that sustain a particular living organism. It is estimated that of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about 2/3 or 100,000 per day die of age-related causes. Biological aging is by far the leading cause of death in the United States.

Life Expectancy in the U.S.

How long you live depends on your gender and geography. In the United States women live longer than men. As of May 2013, the average life expectancy of women is 81 years on average and men is 76. Even though on average women still live longer than men, over the last 15 years the gap has narrowed.

Geography also impacts the life expectancy of men and women in the United States. Coastal California and many of the Northern States have significantly higher life expectancies than many Southern States. There are many factors that contribute to these statistics, but lifestyle plays the largest role. California residents, on average, live a more active lifestyle, eat better, and smoke less than many other States.

Currently in the United States the death rate is 8.9 per every 1000 people. The death rate is projected to increase to 10.9 by 2040. With the continued improvements in health care, many people may wonder why the death rate has stopped decreasing and started to increase. The rise in death rate is due to an aging population in the United States. After the baby boom following World War II the birth rate began to decrease. Today, the aging population combined with decreased birth rate means that the death rate in the United States is increasing.

Leading Causes of Death in the U.S.

The leading causes of death in the United States has changed over time with death by infectious diseases such as influenza decreasing and degenerative diseases such as cancer and diabetes increasing.

Age has a significant impact on the cause of death in the United States. People over the age of 45 are more likely to die from cardiovascular diseases, malignant neoplasms (cancers) and diabetes. People over the age of 65 are more likely to die from chronic lower respiratory disease, influenza and pneumonia.

The causes of death for people under the age of 35 are far different. Younger people are more likely to die from motor vehicle accidents and firearms than older people.

Occupations with High Fatal Work Injury Rates

Your profession also impacts your life expectancy in the United States. As a percentage per 100,000 employees, in 2011 the jobs with the highest fatal injury rate are fishing workers and logging workers. Aircraft pilots, refuse collectors, roofers, and steel workers, also have a high fatal work injury rate when compared to other professions.

By far, the most fatal work injuries per year happen to truck drives, followed by farmers and ranchers. Even though more than 700 truckers die per year, the fatality rate is lower than many other professions because of the large number of people employed as truck drivers. You can see by the data above that the profession you choose can have a significant impact on your life expectancy.

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Two More Death Cartoons

Two More Death Cartoons

Pickles and Non Sequitur both featured death cartoons yesterday.

It’s another cemetery joke in Non Sequitur. A guy is lounging in a grave, complete with recliner, reading lamp and newspaper in hand. A woman (presumably his wife) is standing nearby saying, “Speaking of hating to spend money on things that aren’t being used, your dinner is getting cold.”

Meanwhile, over in Pickles, Grampa Earl is coughing and sniffling. His grandson says, “You’re not going to die, are you Grampa?” He replies, “Yes, but probably not today.”

The boy replies, “Good. I don’t want to be here when you die.” Grampa says, “Okay. I’ll try to schedule it when you’re out of town.”

Would we be better off knowing our own mortal deadline? It never seems to come at a convenient time.

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Grim Reaper at the Cleaners Death Cartoon

Grim Reaper at the Cleaners Death Cartoon

Today’s Bizarro has the Grim Reaper at the cleaners, stripped to his skivvies. The lady at the counter is looking over his black robes and says, “What’s with you and the bloodstains all the time?”

How can she tell blood stains on a black robe?

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Death Cartoon on Mourning Timeframes

Death Cartoon on Mourning Timeframes

This recent Pearls Before Swine death cartoon eloquently illustrates how individuals all need different amounts of time to mourn – and they grieve in different ways.

The Guard Duck and Pig are putting together a basketball team. Guard Duck says, “Hey, Mr. Armadillo. Care to join our basketball team?” Mr. Armadillo replies, “I’d like to, but my wife just got run over by a truck and I’m afraid I need some time to mourn.”

There is one panel’s worth of silence.

“Okay, I’m good,” says Mr. Armadillo. “He is SO resilient,” marvels Pig.

Okay, so armadillos have a habit of getting run over on the road on a regular basis. Humans, whether they admit it or not, need a bit more time than a moment to process the loss of a loved one.

Don’t be a human armadillo. Take time to recognize that life is changed by loss.

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Info on Facebook and Death

Info on Facebook and Death

There’s a great Mashable article on Facebook and death – “How 1 Billion People Are Coping With Death And Facebook.”

Wonder what happens to your profile when you die? Make sure someone can find your password information, or your family could be in a heap of trouble!

A few good tips from the story:

So what happens to all those suddenly abandoned profiles? Their fate could go one of four ways:

The profile remains untouched, unaccessed, unreported and therefore open to everyday wall posts, photo tags, status mentions and Facebook ads. In other words, business as usual.A family member or close friend may choose to report a death to Facebook. Upon receipt of proof of death, such as a death certificate or local obituary, Facebook will switch the dead user’s timeline to a “memorial page.”A close family member may petition Facebook to deactivate a dead user’s account.Users may gain access to a dead user’s profile in one of two ways: either through knowledge of the dead user’s password, a practice against Facebook’s terms of service, or through a court subpoena. However, per Facebook’s privacy policy and strict state law, courts rarely grant outside access to said social data. More on that later.

The story includes online grieving, Facebook’s official policy for handling user deaths, and online interfacing with the dead.

Read the whole story on Mashable.

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BBC TV: The Art of Looking Death in the Face

BBC TV: The Art of Looking Death in the Face

“How do we begin to talk about death? Death doesn’t answer back. The Grim Reaper’s not big on conversation.”

That’s how reporter Michael Smith started a piece on art and death on The Culture Show on BBC TV. He continued, “Death, after all is a guess, a great unknown, the one blank canvas that awaits us all. How do we imagine the unimaginable?”

He visits a long-established funeral home and the Wellcome Collection, known for exploring the connections between medicine, art and life, which is opening an exhibition about death.

Commemorating death can be more expensive than living. In the Victorian era, wealthy people were expected to entertain with food and drink, as well as provide gifts.

The story shows a collection of memorial rings that families would give to certain important people. Someone could spend an estimated $25,000 on jewelry alone!

A new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection looks at morbid art – a sculpture of a triumphant Death carrying a bow and arrow, a two-sided portrait of a person on one side and a skull on the other, etchings with examples of life and death intersecting.

“Death is the one great democratic experience,” says Smith. This is a very poetic five-minute meditation on life, death and art. Check it out!

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Woody Allen on Life, Death and Advance Directives

Woody Allen on Life, Death and Advance Directives Woody Allen the hypochondriac in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Filmmaker, actor, writer and comedian Woody Allen wrote a brilliant opinion piece in Sunday’s New York Times: Hypochondria – An Inside Look. His essay provides a great conversation starter on advance directives and end-of-life issues.

Allen insists he’s not a hypochondriac but an alarmist. He doesn’t experience imaginary maladies — his maladies are real. He explains:

What distinguishes my hysteria is that at the appearance of the mildest symptom, let’s say chapped lips, I instantly leap to the conclusion that the chapped lips indicate a brain tumor. Or maybe lung cancer. In one instance I thought it was Mad Cow.

The point is, I am always certain I’ve come down with something life threatening. It matters little that few people are ever found dead of chapped lips. Every minor ache or pain sends me to a doctor’s office in need of reassurance that my latest allergy will not require a heart transplant, or that I have misdiagnosed my hives and it’s not possible for a human being to contract elm blight.

Even though he is in great health and takes great care with vitamins, supplements and exercise, still, the fear lurks.

But what’s this obsession with personal vulnerability? When I panic over symptoms that require no more than an aspirin or a little calamine lotion, what is it I’m really frightened of? My best guess is dying. I have always had an animal fear of death, a fate I rank second only to having to sit through a rock concert. My wife tries to be consoling about mortality and assures me that death is a natural part of life, and that we all die sooner or later. Oddly this news, whispered into my ear at 3 a.m., causes me to leap screaming from the bed, snap on every light in the house and play my recording of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” at top volume till the sun comes up.

I sometimes imagine that death might be more tolerable if I passed away in my sleep, although the reality is, no form of dying is acceptable to me with the possible exception of being kicked to death by a pair of scantily clad cocktail waitresses.

The real fear, though, is experiencing a fate worse than death: a debilitating stroke, a coma (when he’s aware and can’t change the channel from Fox News), or being on life support and hearing relatives argue about pulling the plug. The worst is ending up a living vegetable.

This is a great humor-filled essay to help start those advance directive conversations with your family. Read the essay and start a conversation today!

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Holidays, Hospitals and Death (Cartoons)

Holidays, Hospitals and Death (Cartoons)

Cartoonist Stephan Pastis’ strip Pearls Before Swine is a great source for Death Cartoons. One particularly on-target Pearls Before Swine cartoon is featured on the cover of A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die. While he’ll often do cartoons with puns that are real groaners, he also does very sensitive depictions of love and loss.

He just did a series about a character named Andy who is visiting his dad in the hospital during the holidays. These cartoons show how hard it can be to talk with family members. Click on the titles to see the cartoons at GoComics.com.

To everyone who has had a loved one die during the Christmas season, my thoughts and prayers are with you.

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Great Video on Talking to Kids about Death

Great Video on Talking to Kids about Death Caitlin Doughty, Ask a Mortician

I admire Caitlin Doughty, licensed mortician and founder of the Order of the Good Death. With sly humor and good advice, she, like me, seeks to help start funeral planning conversations. This new video on her Youtube channel demonstrates how adults can talk to their children about death.

“As adults, we’ve gotten very good at denying death, at figuring out how to push it way back into the back corners of our minds,” Doughty said. “But a child faced with death hasn’t built up those same defense mechanisms and might not be as good at repressing their fears.”

When Doughty was eight years old, she saw a child die in a traumatic way. A scene like that is often replayed over and over in a child’s mind, and children don’t have to see a death happen to be psychologically traumatized.

“If you’re a parent or guardian, you need to man up, or woman up, and push past your own fears about death to talk to your child about it. Do not let them suffer in confusion and silence because you are afraid,” she said.

Doughty then goes on to use a fuzzy doll puppet to demonstrate a few questions you might face and answers you might consider. It’s got humor, humanity and good advice. Check out the video – it’s great.

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Death Cartoon Collection

Death Cartoon Collection

It’s been a while since I posted on some Death Cartoons – here are a few recent gems.

In Pickles, grandson Nelson says to Grandpa, “I’ll miss you when you’re gone, Grandpa.” Grandpa thinks about this for a frame and says, “Where am I going?” (I heard this a lot at Christian funerals reading from the book of John.) Grandma says, “I don’t know, but I hope you clean up this mess before you go.” We all need to clean up our messes before we go.

In F Minus, there’s a guy blowing up a beach ball while sitting in a pew. His neighbor says, “No, in fact I don’t think anything goes over well with the funeral crowd.” The moral of the story: don’t try to be entertaining at a funeral. Folks aren’t there for fun.

And lastly, we have a Close to Home cartoon with The Grim Reaper on a couch in a psychiatrist’s office. The doctor is saying, “I think we all have a fear of death. It’s just that in your case, you’re afraid of, well, YOU. Hmm, interesting.”

Whether you fear death or not, consider coming to the first Death Café event in Albuquerque on September 30, 2012, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Discuss mortality over tea and cakes! See the Death Café link at AGoodGoodbye.com for more information.

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Death and The Civil War

Death and The Civil War

The American way of death changed dramatically during the Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Embalming was just starting to be used experimentally in the 1840s and 1850s. The huge number of war dead, and the surgeon-embalmers who saw an entrepreneurial opportunity, changed the way bodies in general were treated in the U.S. in the 20th century.

In the 1860s, surgeon-embalmers utilized chemical compounds, including mercury and arsenic, to preserve soldiers’ bodies long enough to ship them from the battlefield to their hometowns. Embalming certificates were sold to families. Soldiers would pin the paper inside their uniforms so if they were killed in battle, the certificate vouched embalming was paid for and the body’s ticket home.

Before the Civil War, there were no national cemeteries in America. No provisions for identifying the dead, or for notifying next of kin, or for providing aid to the suffering families of dead veterans. No federal relief organizations, no effective ambulance corps, no adequate federal hospitals, no federal provisions for burying the dead. No Arlington Cemetery. No Memorial Day.

You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about death and the Civil War on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Presents Death and the Civil War, premiering Tuesday, September 18, 2012 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. ET on PBS (check your local listings).

Here’s more information about the program:

From acclaimed filmmaker Ric Burns, Death and the Civil War explores an essential but largely overlooked aspect of the most pivotal event in American history: the transformation of the nation by the death of an estimated 750,000 people – nearly two and a half percent of the population – in four dark and searing years from 1861 to 1865.

With the coming of the Civil War, and the staggering and completely unprecedented casualties it ushered in, death entered the experience of the American people as it never had before – on a scale and in a manner no one had ever imagined possible, and under circumstances for which the nation would prove completely unprepared. The impact would permanently alter the character of the republic, the culture of the government and the psyche of the American people – down to this day.

“Transpose the percentage of dead that mid-19th-century America faced into our own time – seven million dead, if we had the same percentage,” says author Drew Gilpin Faust, on whose groundbreaking book, This Republic of Suffering, the film is based. “What would we as a nation today be like if we faced the loss of seven million individuals?”

Death and the Civil War tracks the increasingly lethal arc of the war, from the bloodless opening in 1861, through the chaos of Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and the unspeakable carnage of 1864 – down through the struggle, in the aftermath of the war, to cope with an American landscape littered with the bodies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many unburied, most unidentified.

The work of contending with death on this scale would propel extraordinary changes in the inner and outer life of all Americans – posing challenges for which there were no ready answers when the war began – challenges that called forth remarkable and eventually heroic efforts on the part of individuals, groups and the government – as Americans worked to improvise new solutions, new institutions, new ways of coping with death on an unimaginable scale.

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Two Grim Reapers and a Dilbert Death Cartoon

Two Grim Reapers and a Dilbert Death Cartoon

Today’s Dilbert cartoon has Dilbert saying, “When I die, I want my ashes scattered in outer space.” Dogbert replies, “Cool! I’ll bribe an Elbonian general to strap you to an intercontinental missile when they test it next week.” Dilbert says, “It’s better if the dying and the ash scattering are two separate events.” “Don’t be a burden on the living,” says Dogbert.

Over in the Lio cartoon, he’s fishing with the Grim Reaper. Catch of the day, anyone?

Meanwhile, an earlier Pearls Before Swine has the Grim Reaper getting into a T-shirt that has an awkward message:

Oh, the irony!

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