Self-serving bias, ingroup bias, and what the left forgets about bottom-half men

I just heard a fact I can’t stop thinking about.

The average resident with a college degree in Minneapolis can expect to live as long as anyone in the developed world. Life expectancy for the average resident without a degree in the city where Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd is roughly equal to North Korea.

This fact illustrates, first, that “health and wellness” is completely different for the top- and bottom-half in the US. (Much like marriage is a completely different institution for bottom-half and top-half couples.)

And just like the left and right have their own stories about the gender pay gap and bottom-half male malaise, the same is true of the life expectancy gap (at least when they’re willing to talk about it).

The right tends to blame individual choices. They point out that people without college degrees tend to do more of the stuff that leads to (or is at least associated with) lower life expectancy. For example, they exercise less often, eat more processed food, consume more calories, acquire more STIs, work riskier jobs, sleep fewer hours, take more recreational drugs, drink more alcohol, get fewer routine screenings, wait longer to seek medical care, smoke more cigarettes, etc.

The average leftist is far more likely to assign far more blame to “the system.” They will point out all the barriers that only or mostly exist for people without college degrees that make it harder for them to make healthy choices. They’ll point out that even when bottom-half folks make the same choices as the top-half, various interlocking systems rob them of similar results.

For instance, non-white people hold fewer degrees than white people, on average. They also visit a doctor less often. Medical racism is one reason for this, among many (including misogyny and misogynoir).

Even when people of color do seek out and get the same care as whites, that care is less effective and more dangerous for them. The average drug, device, and procedure is both safer for and more effective on whites because we make up a disproportionate percentage of clinical test subjects. This has been true for decades.

I could probably find some system that makes it harder for the average non-degreed person to exercise, eat less processed food, consume fewer calories, etc., etc. I won’t, though. I’m lazy, it would be tedious, and you get the point.

Right-wing policy analysis, by contrast, often seems much more mired in “Self-Serving Bias​​.”