I picked up MacLeans this week because of their cover feature story.
Canadians vs. Americans: The Startling Facts
Basically, compared to the US, we work less, live longer, enjoy better health and have more sex. We’re also wealthier and we spend a lot less on healthcare.
We read through it and pretty much nodded the entire way: yep, sounds about right.
Some interesting ones of note:
- Canadians are wealthier than Americans. It’s not because we make more (we don’t) – it’s because we carry less debt. As a result, our networth is much higher (30% higher). Sure, they have bigger homes and nicer cars; they bought it on credit.
- Canadians work less hours than Americans. Plus we receive (and take) more vacation time. We spend more time with our friends and families per week. We also drink more booze. We spend less on homes and cars and tend to eschew big “status” or “luxury” purchases like SUVs.
- We delay marriage and as a result, get divorced a lot less. They seemed to attribute this to the fact that we tend to co-habitate more than Americans as the stigma against it just isn’t here. Americans have more children and get married younger; they also get divorced more (particularly in the “Bible belt”).
- We’re a lot healthier for a lot less money. It’s not rocket science – we take better care of ourselves, we take better care of our poor and we only intervene with medical treatment when it’s necessary. The amazing thing to me is that even with our “socialized medicine” that seems to freak Americans out, they spend twice as much as we do on it. Our life expectancies are longer, infant mortality is lower and we have less incidence of “lifestyle” diseases like diabetes and heart disease, obesity etc.
- We actually have higher crime rates for things like property crime and auto theft. But Americans have us beat on violent crimes like murder. Why? They have a lot more guns. Evidently for every 100 people, 30 Canadians have guns but 90 Americans do. That’s a lot of weaponry.
- We have more sex, for longer sessions, with more people and with fewer consequences. We’re no France by any stretch but we’re holding our own evidently. The surprising thing to me here was that we are having more sex, more adventurously, but Americans have much higher teen pregnancies and STDs. It appears that the abstinence-only training has resulted in a lot of guilt and fear and shame about sex so they aren’t using protection.
- Canadians travel a lot more and tend to go global. But we really like to visit the States!
