I'm confused - your phrasing suggests you disagree with me, yet your numbers fully support my claims. There is no reason a student, a retired person, or a part time worker can't exercise and cook healthy food. I recently learned how to do a clutch flag from a retired person who always seems to make time for his health.
I would have brought up a different citation [2] but it wouldn't have differed significantly.
You also bring up an important additional point - disability. Folks who are truly disabled (as opposed to engaging in disability fraud [1]) have unfixable reasons for being unhealthy and the same unfixable reason for being poor (a person unable to work is poor by definition - most wealth transfers are excluded from poverty calculations). The solutions here are a) cracking down on disability fraud and b) figuring out how to cure all the different disability types.
(Of course, some types of disability are also caused, in part, by the actions of the disabled person; consider a diabetic person who lost their feet. )
I would have brought up a different citation [2] but it wouldn't have differed significantly.
You also bring up an important additional point - disability. Folks who are truly disabled (as opposed to engaging in disability fraud [1]) have unfixable reasons for being unhealthy and the same unfixable reason for being poor (a person unable to work is poor by definition - most wealth transfers are excluded from poverty calculations). The solutions here are a) cracking down on disability fraud and b) figuring out how to cure all the different disability types.
(Of course, some types of disability are also caused, in part, by the actions of the disabled person; consider a diabetic person who lost their feet. )
[1] http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
[2] My numbers count people who worked 27+ weeks in a year, rather than a point in time snapshot. No major disagreement though: http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/a-profile-of-the-working...