>> the well, everyone. >> this morning, the u.s. senate passed the democrats' $3.5 trillion budget proposal after passing the $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan yesterday, both building blocks of the build back better proposal. he will talk about that shortly here at the white house, scheduled to get underway about 15 minutes ago. we will take you there live when it starts, here on c-span. " continues. host: this is mark hayward, he is a professor of sociology at the university of texas at austin. professor, thanks for giving us your time today. guest: you're welcome, thank you. host: what would you say is life

expectancy and what is it based on? guest: life expectancy usually is a summary matrix indicator. it is based on the current mortality rates of people from birth to death. hypothetically it says, if a baby was born today, how long would they live if the current mortality rates persisted throughout their lifetime? essentially it is a model, an indicator, but it is clearly unrealistic because mortality will change over time. host: is there an average? guest: it is the expected value. it is like a mean. host: an explanation. guest: when you say the life expectancy of someone is 25, it says on average, for the average person who is alive at a specific age, this is what their expected life would look like.

if those rates persisted throughout the remainder of their lives. host: you were quoted on a new report, or information that came out from the cdc when it took a look at life expectancy showing an overall decline. could you talk about what that report found? guest: the overall report said that the life expectancy dropped about 1.5 years in the united states for the entire population for the year that was covered by the pandemic. basically, 2020 is what the report covers. it brackets the change of life expectancy from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. then it went into the kind of life expectancy changes for major ethnic groups. for black americans and hispanic americans, and it also talked about the types of -- the role of covid deaths in -- that they played in the decline of life

expectancy. it also talked about other kinds of deaths each offset covid deaths and had we not had improvements in some aspects of our mortality the effects of covid would have been even greater. host: one of the comparisons made from the release of this information, the biggest drop since world war ii. what do you think that comparison? guest: i think that is a fair comparison. if you think about what world war ii means, it means there was a disaster that happened. it was a shock to our population. that is exactly what the pandemic is, it is a major shock to our mortality. we haven't seen that kind of drop in the life expectancy since world war ii. in a modern country we expect that life expectancy will continue to improve over time. and we see these kinds of dramatic drops in life

expectancy, that is cause for concern, because it says realistically some people in some groups are facing quite high risks, unusual, and they appeared rapidly. that is the nature of covid in the pandemic. host: our guest with us to talk about these latest trends. he is michael hayward of the university of texas at austin. you can ask them questions on this report and the information there. you can call us at (202) 748-8000 for the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 for the mountain and pacific time zones. professor, we talked about the impact of covid when it comes to these jobs. aside from that, were there other factors? guest: in terms of the decline in life expectancy, we saw some additional contributions from drug poisoning. the opioid epidemic continues to percolate along, as it did before covid. then we had some increases in accidents and homicides. those were kind of small

potatoes in comparison to covid. to some extent i actually wonder if the effects are not greater than we are seeing, because it took us a while to actually measure covid deaths with some degree of accuracy. as we got better at identifying deaths on the death certificates. host: is this measured by deaths directly related to covid or deaths because of associated factors to covid? is that measured in there? guest: this is death due to covid. code, so we are not talking about overall increases of mortality through that time period. what we call excess mortality. we are dealing with cause of death on the death certificate. host: when it comes to groups impacted by what the cdc's data

show -- hispanics, black americans -- how did they factor into these numbers? guest: if you think about magnitude of the problem in populations it was about three years in decline of life expectancy for hispanics, and about the same amount in black americans too. when we say 1.5 years is a big drop, three years is a much bigger drop. you see the disproportionate impact of covid on these two minority populations. that kind of rearranged what we think about as the mortality disparities between groups. for african-americans, they been closing the gap with whites for some time. all of a sudden the cap drastically widened next to covid. for hispanics, there mortality was actually better. their life expectancy was better than whites. what their increased mortality

-- they essentially closed the gap between hispanics and whites. host: how often is this type of data looked at, and would trends change depending on where we are as far as vaccination availability and who takes it and other factors there? guest: yeah. what we are seeing is kind of a mixture. when you see the mortality over the entire time period, we have different phases of the pandemic. we had the phases where it was on the east coast and there was no vaccination, then it spread into different parts of the country. our ethnic groups are not randomly distributed. they are concentrated in certain geographic areas. as the pandemic moves, their experience changes as well. then, of course, you got to the latter part of the pandemic where we are beginning to see the effects of the vaccines. that is also rearranging the

kind of inequality we are seeing, because lacks hispanics traditionally are less likely to be vaccinated than whites, although what we have a real divide on is education. less educated people are much less likely to be vaccinated. it is this combination of education and rate and -- and race and ethnicity. host: a discussion on u.s. life expectancy with mark hayward of the university of texas at austin. our first caller is michael. you are on with mr. hayward. go ahead. caller: hello. i have to tell you, i'm down in our county, which you may have seen on the news. we are the county that are under attack, essentially, by a governor to force our kids to go into schools with masks. this ties in directly and i am thrilled to have someone in

sociology addressing this, because what he is doing, he is in a corner. he knows history is going to come out and the dictionary definitions of natural immunity and genocide means he is going to go into history books with a black hat. he is doubling down on us, and when you discuss things like mortality and longevity and education, what we are really talking about the hind the open your crisis and behind the covid crisis, the deep sociological roots, or a deep western eugenic bias that started in the 1860's with herbert spencer. on both the right and left, you know, think tanks on both sides have a firm belief that -- and it is wrong, just like with climate change -- they think evolution optimizes and the free market competition, you know, like nature, leads to optimum

outcomes. neither of those things could be further from the truth. as a result it has caused a eugenic virus. we think it is for the greater good that we have these mortality with let's educated -- the less educated, the poor. host: you put a lot out there, so we will let our guest respond. guest: i think motivation is hard for me to actually put out there. i will say there are certainly different values placed on different political goals, so you have some openers that are more interested in what we would call economic freedom, which is essentially allowing companies to have, enjoy an environment where they can maximize profit. other states and other governors are prioritizing public health, so you have a different set of regulations that ensue.

this is actually not news. it has been going on for some time. we have seen a growing divide across states. a long time before covid ever appeared rate we had states investing in their populations in a variety of ways and states that were not investing in their populations. that has led to drastic changes in life expectancies of states, such as the comparison between mississippi or louisiana and states such as as a juicer tour and a soda. this is actually -- this has actually evolved over time and when you add covid into the mix, it is really the capstone in kind of the, i would say, case study in the ways in which politics affects population health. this has been the case for a long time. host: we have a viewer from twitter. is life expectancy based on all

things being equal, or is poverty, gender, and ethnicity figured into it? guest: it is based on the average of the population. it doesn't separate out poor people and well educated people unless you are going to generate tables specific to those groups. so it says, for the average american this is what life expectancy is expected to be if the rates persisted throughout their entire lifetime. that is the average person, and that means we have rich and poor, and black-and-white and hispanic and asian. what we were talking about is the average that comes down to all of those factors pulled together -- pooled together. there are wide disparities in life expectancy, as we have seen reflected in the report. we have known this for quite a long time and we recently have been looking at the changes in life expectancy by education group. what is clear is that the only

group improving in life expectancy in the united states are well educated, college-educated people. life expectancy has been on the decline for some time among the less-educated population of the united states. my group is not the only group to publish and talk about these findings. there is some excellent work done at princeton university. host: this is scott in the beach, go ahead, please. -- in myrtle beach, go ahead, please. caller: i want you to know i'm a big dallas cowboys fan. however, i have an issue with these people in missouri, and arkansas, and florida who don't want to take the vaccine and basically try to live their life so they spread it to other people. shouldn't we at some point courting these people off --

cordon these people off? l.a. county has 10 million people in one county. there are people there that might want the vaccine and can't get it, and these people in missouri and arkansas have the opportunity to get it and they don't want it. they are just going to go to new york and get on a tour bus and spread through new york. -- spread it through new york. host: that is scott in south carolina. guest: i fear the frustration between >> c-span is live at the white house, where president biden is getting ready to talk about his build back that her agenda. the event is expected to get underway shortly. you are watching live coverage here on c-span. pres. biden: -- making the administration the first ever to add 4 million jobs in the first six months in office.