Americans received a lot of good news early in September, but its importance was lost amidst all the aftermath of 9-11 ceremonies and the President's speech to the United Nations. Granted that Americans are experiencing economic problems, a report from the National Center for Health Statistics highlighted the fact that Americans are now living longer, healthier lives than ever before in the history of the nation.

This nation is awash in organizations that exist to do nothing than conjure up scenarios designed to convince us that life in America is one of crime, disease, and environmental disaster everywhere we look, but the truth is very different.

According to the annual report released on September 12, death is on the decline for babies, adults and older people alike. Dread diseases such as AIDS, cancer and heart disease are all claiming fewer lives. Even the homicide rate has declined. Death rates from motor vehicle crashes have also fallen since 1970. Life in America has shown improvement by virtually any measurement applied. The rates for heart disease have fallen by more than a half and even more dramatically for stroke and other cerebrovascular diseases. Only diabetes has defied this trend, attributed to a trend toward obesity.

Think of this; the average baby born in 1900 could expect to live 47.3 years. By 1950, life expectancy has risen to 68.2 years of life and, by 2000, it had risen 76.9. And that's just for men. Women live an average eight years longer.

Infant mortality, babies dying before their first birthday, hit a record low in 2000, reaching a more 6.9 per 1,000 live births; that rate has fallen 75 percent since 1950. Mortality among children and young adults between 1 and 24 years old declined by more than half since 1950. Among adults, ages 25 to 44, deaths declined by more than 40 percent between 1950 and 1999. HIV was the leading cause of death for this age group and its rates, too, have fallen significantly.

Among older Americans, ages 45 to 64, the death rate fell by 50 percent. Cancer is still the leading cause of death in this age group, but those rates, which rose slowly through the 1980s, have begun to decline. Deaths from heart disease have fallen by nearly half between 1950 and 1999, representing to fewer than 268 people per 100,000. Stoke declined from 1950 from 181 of every 100,000 to just 62 per 100,000 by 1999.

It's significant, too, that American women are having more children than at any other time in the past three decades, 2.1 on average. In February, the National Center for Health Statistics announced that there were 4,058,814 births in 2000, up 2.5 percent from 1999. It was the first time since 1993 that births topped four million. Despite the fact that Americans are living longer, they are replacing themselves.

The news is even better in yet another respect, the teen pregnancy rate down. Our nation's seventy million children are doing better in many respects. Fewer eighth through tenth graders are smoking, though high school age smoking remained statistically unchanged according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics which released a report in July 2002. The report noted that more parents were actively reading to their children, up to 58 percent, from 54 percent in 1999. More youngsters between two and five had a good diet, 27 percent in 1998, up from 21 percent in 1996.

Indeed, the 2000 Census revealed that, between 1990 and 2000, the median household income had leapt to $41,343, a gain of more than $11,000. A record 35.3 million of America's 115 million households owns one car, van or truck. Some 40.3 million own two vehicles, and 19.1 million own three. Currently, however, rising costs are stretching income to the limit and there is a rise in the number of the poor. Congress, however, is unresponsive to either spending or tax cuts. Massive illegal immigration continues to burden everyone. And Americans are told to pay billions for an educational system that produces declining results.

Despite the daily reports of crime in America, there was a drop in violent crime in 2000, about one million fewer crimes than in 1999; a 15 percent change that represented the largest one-year drop since the Justice Department began its National Crime Victimization Survey in 1973. Indeed, crime had been in decline throughout the 1990s. Property crimes also declined by ten percent between 1999 and 2000. These are good trends and no doubt reflect the fact that this nation has a record number of people either incarcerated or under supervision by authorities. The 6.6 million people in the correctional system are a record high, about 3 percent of the population.

This is well worth keeping in mind as the Greens, the food police, animal rights groups and others continue their drumbeat of deliberate misinformation. We need to reverse the harm done by Green forest policies, by the Endangered Species Act that continues to be used to thwart new development, whether it is new housing for our population or the welfare of ranchers and farmers. We need to put the brakes on further expansion of existing clean air and clean water regulations. The original intent of this legislation has long since been achieved.

There's a big job ahead of us to insure that the doomsday propagandists don't have their way and, in the process, continue their assault on this nation's economy and security.

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Alan Caruba is the founder of The National Anxiety Center (www.anxietycenter.com), a clearinghouse for information about scare campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policy.

© Copyright 2001-2010 John Hawkins
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