和訳
和訳例をお願いします。
Just look at today's magazines, TV shows, websites, self-help booksーand where we put our dollers. As a country, we make up about 4 percent of the world's total population, yet we use almost half of all the money spent on medical care. We should be pretty healthy.
Yet I have always been amazed at how poorly the US ranks in health when compared with other countries. When I began medical school in 1970 we stood at about 15th in what I call the Health Olympics, the ranking of countries by life expectancy or infant mortality. Twenty years later we were about 20th, and in recent years we have gone back to around 25th, behind almost all rich countries and a few poor ones. For the richest and most powerful country in the world's history, this is a disgrace.
Research during this last decade has shown that the health of a group of people is not affected considerably by individual aehaviors such as smoking, diet, and exercize, by genetics, or by the use of health care. In countries where basic goods are readily available, people's life span depends on the hierarchical structure of their society; that is, the size of the gap between rich and poor.
We can learn something by looking at countries that do well in the Health Olympics. In 1960 Japan stood 23rd, but by 1977 it had overtaken all the others in the health race. Today, at No.1, Japanese people have a life expectancy on average three and half years longer than Americans. Twice as many Japanese men as American men smoke, yet the deaths probably caused by smoking are half of ours. Why? After the Second World War, the hierarchical structure of Japan was reorganized so all citizens shared more equally in the economy. Today Japanese CEOs make 15 to 20 times what entry-level workers make, not the almost 500-fold difference in the US. During their recent economic crisis, CEOs and managers in Japan took cuts in pay rather than lay off workers. That the structure of society is key to health becomes evident when we look at Japanese who emigrate; their health declines to the level of the inhabitants of the new country.
以上になります。
