Power Line quoted, earlier in the week, a Cato-conducted tongue-in-cheek study that applies Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s standard for attributing deaths to economic behavior, with the arithmetically driven conclusion that Obama has personally killed nearly 60,000 Americans with his own policies.  The Republican Presidential Candidate, Mitt Romney, plainly is a piker who does not kill efficiently, having done in only one, and taken far more time to do so.

Of course, the claim by the Democratic Presidential Candidate through his SuperPAC is dishonest, and the claim by Cato is ludicrous and made only to illustrate that point.  A fair question to ask, though, is what is the impact on American lives the Democratic Presidential Candidate has had with Obamanomics?  The answer is apparent.

The connection between poverty level and life expectancy has been well established, as the following graph (which takes a broad-brush view of splitting between poor and rich; however in the present context, finer gradations are not needed) illustrates:

The life expectancy delta between “rich” and “poor” over the 20 years of this study has reached +4-ish years in favor of the “rich” for the population in general, with a larger disparity among men.

On the other hand, the number of Americans living in poverty has been growing sharply during the 3+ years of Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s current term on the hustings.  In 2010, the number of Americans living in poverty was 15.1% of the population, while that had risen to 15.7% in 2011—an increase of 2.2 million Americans reduced to poverty in just that one year.  If we go back to 2009, we see an increase of some 5.2 million Americans living in poverty under Obamanomics.

The Democratic Presidential Candidate’s policies have shortened the lives of 5 million Americans by roughly four years—and he’s achieved this in only three years of campaigning.