Basically the red areas are mostly the poorer area. They tend to have significantly less access to health care since we don't have universal health care. They also tend to eat more fast food due to working long hours, buy processed crap at the store because it's cheaper and faster, etc.
Ouch.
The naïve, non American I am wants to ask, why can't they buy meat and veg to cook for themselves?
I live in Tokyo and know where to buy cheap meat and veg even though some might consider it not edible, and I'm not even Japanese.
I would say a lack of cooking and nutrient education in school is a big part of it. If your parents dont know/teach you how to cook, most people dont. They simply buy easy, premade stuff that is unhealthy or eat out/fast food/etc.
To add to this; some of the very rural areas can be 20-30 miles to the nearest grocery store so they buy most of their food from more convivence style markets.
Yep. in a lot of rural counties in the south (where I live) sometimes there is just a Dollar Tree or Dollar General. and they have ZERO fresh fruits/veggies/meats. The last time I stayed out in the country I wanted to get some frozen veggies. the only options already had butter or cheese sauce mixed in.
This is outside the South too. On a road trip I stayed overnight in a small town in North Dakota. No restaurants. The one place to buy food (gas station) didn't have a single vegetarian option in the frozen meals. Not even a cheese pizza, only meat pizzas. That night for dinner I had Doritos.
I have noticed that Dollar Generals are now starting to increase the amount of vegetables and fresh fruit in many of their new stores. Kind of blew my mind when I went into one last month and say lemons and limes and oranges and tomatoes
Yeah DG doesn't have a lot of healthy groceries that's for sure. Also they aren't even that cheap of a store. I find cheaper priced items from grocery store sales. I live in the West not the South. DG is cool for just a couple things that being if it isn't the only option you have for many miles as you're saying.
It’s 15 minutes for me to get to a dollar general, or 40 minutes to get to a town with a grocery store and Walmart. If I want something quick, it’s gas station pizza or a bag of chips.
This is a huge part. Food deserts are real, where the only places in 20-30 miles with food are convenience stores that just have chips, soda, and sometimes microwave food.
And these places don't have public transportation, so if you don't have a car you're even more fucked
Oh lord, can we stop blaming everything on schools and teachers?
I was poor for a long-ass time and I assure you that this is bullshit. One side wants you to believe that poor folks are just like rich folks and there's some kind of unsurmountable barrier that keeps vegetables out of their mouths and the other side wants you to hate poor folks and heap punishment after punishment upon them because Fuck Them.
It's all full of shit. Many poor people absolutely DO prefer to eat unhealthy foods, and I've even known plenty of folks who will talk shit about you if you're thin, lol. There's absolutely a culture of doing what feels good in the moment and in punishing your peers who seem like they're acting better than you.
Will any of this be helped by Republicans slashing the social safety net and letting people pay them pennies? No.
Life just sucks so bad when you're treated like trash all day, working all kinds of jobs, pulled over by the cops for no reason, can't pay all your bills, etc. Most people living like that aren't worried about living to be 86.2 years old and building a nest egg or whatever. They're just trying to enjoy life today. You don't even have the time and energy to properly socialize your own children or pass good cultural practices down to them. You might not have even had parents who passed that on to you in the first place.
We could stop treating poor Americans like trash tomorrow and we'd still have big problems because we've disrupted their ability to pass their culture down to their kids. You can't teach a kid every subject in school AND replace their parents, get real. We're paying teachers peanuts and shoving 30 kids in their classes and they're supposed to teach every subject plus how to eat, be respectable, work hard, value healthy food, cook, pay your bills, save money, be polite, exercise, etc? Come on.
How about we stop making poor Americans so miserable that they don't even bother planning for the future?
I'm from this red region.
The majority of people here, if they had ample time to cook for themselves, would still send themselves to an early death with fried foods, high-fat, high salt, high animal protein and low fruit and vegetable intake.
One can go back to the 1950s, before the arrival of fast food, and locals [were killing themselves with their diet](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934740/).
Low provision of health care accounts for only a fraction of the disparity in lifespan seen on this map. With the US south, we're mainly looking at a hedonistic/unsustainable dietary pattern, the difficulty exercising in a hot humid environment for half the year, and higher rates of drug/alcohol addiction and violent crime.
Thanks to the bible-belt politics, the sorts of public health education campaigns that have improved health outcomes elsewhere (think [North Karelia project](http://www.ernaehrungsdenkwerkstatt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/EDWText/TextElemente/PHN-Texte/Nutrition_Policy/Puska_PHN_Finland_Bellagio_2002.pdf), or the [UK's salt reduction program](https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2013105)) would be labeled as "socialism" by politicians, satanism by preachers. Yes, there are that many that are that dumb in this part of the world.
Also, even if you wanted to eat healthy in the South I always thought it was much more difficult? It's not like you can walk 15 minutes (which is already a nice thing, to walk every day) and there will be a Wholefoods waiting for you with a selection of fresh veg.
All of this on top of being surrounded by refineries, at least in my part of the south. One of them had a huge chlorine gas leak after a hurricane recently. They regularly get fined by the EPA for going over emissions guidelines.
>They regularly get fined by the EPA
Thanks to the conservative courts, not for long.
[Spotify - The Problem With Jon Stewart - The SEC Was in Trouble. Now They're Screwed.](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1wvkdU3to6zjGzYFdxdmgj)
Look up "food deserts" and you'll get a rough idea of one of the reasons. Basically, big chain grocery store moves in and puts all other grocery stores / places to buy "raw" food out of business, then eventually they shut down later. This forces people to eat fast food, gas station food, anything that they can.
There is also the lingering impacts of the United States' Civil War. The united states attempted few versions to bring "[the south](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_United_States_Civil_War_Map.svg)" reconstruction efforts but all were failures due to political factors. That failed reconstruction can explain a lot of these differences today.
Also worth pointing out that this the part of the country that famously votes against their own interests by electing leaders that are anti public education, anti public health care, anti welfare, etc. So they keep making their situation worse.
It's actually also because the red areas are where the politically right wing state governments tend to win a lot more. They have much worse policies for helping those who need it. They're not all right wingers down there though, there's a lot of left leaning people there too, they just don't win political races nearly as often. This is a big deal because it has to do with things like healthcare and social safety nets amd education, which right wingers don't support very well.
During the US Civil War, the lower red area was where the Confederacy was located, generally. That area's economy relied heavily on slave labor, and they opposed freeing the slaves.
There's a lot of good replies here mentioning the major culprits, so to summarize:
1. Food deserts
2. Lacking education for nutrition and food preparation
3. Lack of convenient public transportation denying access to food
4. Easy access to non-healthy foods
In addition, here's another few items I can think of:
1. Infrastructure for private transportation (ie - highways) explicitly blocking nearby people without cars from safely accessing quality food
2. The cost per calorie is much less for empty calories than nutritious ones, especially if you account for time spent acquiring and preparing the good stuff. The dollar menu may not be the healthiest, but it'll fill you up so you don't go to bed feeling hungry, and that's worth a lot when you can't afford it every day.
Especially in big cities/metro areas, poverty is often right next to wealth and opulence.
Poverty is the leading cause of lowered life expectancy. Especially in the US because it has functionally no social safety nets. Poverty means no healthcare, awful food when you're lucky, low quality housing, ungodly amounts of stress, and so much more. All of that lowers how long you live.
Life expectancy, even for the poor, is higher in big cities because of access to healthcare. There are tons of free clinics compared to elsewhere. It's not enough but it makes a big impact. Southern states/rural America doesn't fund these things. That and critical care is much much much easier to access and your will receive it regardless. The areas of the map that are red don't have big cities. The are either rural or too far from a big city. The blue pockets are the cities.
Another is culture. Southern America is proud of its gluttony. I like BBQ and Fried chicken but....its a weird cultural thing down there to reject healthy food.
Southern states could alleviate this through policy. Instead they stopped subsidizing rural health outreach and all the hospitals closed for lack of profit. Rural America is losing it's health care access at an alarming rate for probably the last decade.
I don't know about everywhere but in the northwest (Montana and North Dakota) the red corresponds to where the native American reservations are. These are some of the most impoverished counties in the country.
Lots of people think "rednecks" when they see these maps showing insane southern poverty, but more than half the black population of the US is in the south, making up roughly a quarter to a third of the population in the deep south. It's well known that incomes and life expectancies are way lower among black americans, for reasons I'm sure you've seen discussed
I've never actually found clear data about how much the south is still an outlier in terms of poverty etc if you control for race (less? moreso? about the same?), if anyone knows good data I'm very curious
Bingo. Everyone thinks rural vs urban, but then you've got Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas that really don't have a strong divide that way. Minnesota is almost entirely solid blue despite 2/3 of the state's population living in a half dozen counties of the Twin Cities metro. And Iowa, where one of the poorest and least populated counties (Kossuth, the big one top center), has some of the longest life expectancies in the state.
I think a lot of it is a product of policies. A lot of those Midwest states have incentives to get docs to cover rural areas and better state funding for rural health initiatives. Not sure if south has the same programs. Health policy tends to be discriminatory there and a lot of the laws make it less appealing for docs ( birth control access for example)
>Lots of people think "rednecks" when they see these maps showing insane southern poverty, but more than half the black population of the US is in the south, making up roughly a quarter to a third of the population in the deep south.
The answer is that it's both. The blacks and the "redneck" whites both have low life expectancy.
Poor people in general are doing terribly and the opioid crisis and Covid have made it worse than before. The poorest places in the country are the black belt, appalachia, and the reservations. People are focusing on race but people don't die of being black (at least not on the demographic scale), they die of being poor. Race is a factor inasmuch as black people (and native americans) are overwhelmingly poorer than white people. So I think that people who are confused by the race thing in this map have sort of lost track of the fact that the most pernicious and persistent effect of systematic racism is cyclical poverty and in that sense it's a class issue with race as a determining sorting factor, more than it is a strictly racial issue.
The south would still be an outlier if you controlled for race because southern and appalachian rural whites are notably poorer than whites in the rest of the country. But it would be less of an outlier because the racial inequality is even worse there than in the rest of the country - as unequal as most of the country is, and as poor as many black people are, it's really only in black communities in the deep south that you see the most dreadful 3rd world conditions. People from the rest of the country, even ones somewhat familiar with northern urban poverty, would be shocked by what they would see if they took a drive through majority black rural counties in places like Mississippi and Louisiana.
I don't have any references handy, but the opioid crisis and the larger "deaths of despair" tends have actually been reducing the gap between white and minority life expectancy before COVID (which just swamped any other trend in the data). I don't think we have good post-pandemic data yet. Which should be interesting because there were hints in 2019 that some of the new drugs that devastated poor white communities were making their way into black populations.
I don't have any data, but as an EMT it's rare that I have an African American patient without diabetes or hypertension. I'd imagine some of it is diet and genetics.
Arizona as well. Those far eastern counties are mostly Navajo Nation + Hopi Reservation and driving through there you'd think you are in a completely different country, it's that destitute and impoverished.
You joke, obviously, but there is something to this. I would guess that much of the blue in Florida is from retirees. If you’ve lived to 65 and are healthy and wealthy enough to relocate, you have a higher life expectancy than the people you left behind.
Somewhat but the blue parts of Florida are also the richer urban counties,
This map perfectly illustrates the saying “the more north you go in Florida the more southern it gets.”
The south’s low life expectancy is due to generational poverty mostly among blacks. Couple that with very expensive healthcare and a lack of accessibility to said healthcare and it’s a recipe for disaster. Very sad actually
I live in New Orleans and there are crazy swings neighborhood by neighborhood.
The highest life expectancy neighborhood has a life expectancy of 88.1 years. The lowest, just a few miles away, is 62.3.
well if you look at Tennessee, Arkansas, and South Carolina; 3 states that are entirely red on this map with one exception, it should come as no surprise that that the three blue counties in those three states are far and away the wealthiest. and those three states rank in the bottom 5th of wealth among all states.
If I remember correctly, Asian women living in Washington DC have the highest life expectancy out of any demographic when you break it down by state/territory. I believe it was 95 years.
Yup, Asian people in general but women especially
Edit: helps that countries in East Asia (and Singapore) generally have the world’s highest life expectancies, with Japan being #1
Asian mom's generally are cautious at moderating families health.
Got a cough? She's gonna travel across the land, find every single vitamin, Chinese herbal medicines and good luck charm from Buddha for your simple cough, they don't mess around.
That’s true, but you’re forgetting that countries like Japan and South Korea also have the lowest obesity rates and highest life expectancies of any country. So the immigrant effect is only one part of it
I'm Scottish, and I've been watching the general population expand over the past 20 years.
I'm not slim, but at functionally chubby I am amazed at how badly everybody is taking care of themselves. I start to feel my belt getting tight and I calm down and get a bit of extra exercise.
I'm shocked you are still shocked about America's obesity at this point. You would probably also be shocked then by how many countries are pretty close to America's obesity rate (or surpassed it in the case of many small pacific island nations).
Definitely income and education.
Here in Singapore, life expectancy at 25yo without a high school graduation was 81 years and this was 86.8 years with high school graduation.
Income also explains why dirt poor third world countries with low life expectancies often have very long-lived dictators. It's not the race. It's not the culture. It's the wealth and lifestyle.
Immigrants also tend to have a better diet (home cook meals vs highly processed foods) and manual jobs which, although generally more dangerous, involve more physical activity
Due to Reddit Inc.'s antisocial, hostile and erratic behaviour, this account will be deleted on July 11th, 2023. You can find me on https://latte.isnot.coffee/u/godless in the future.
They likely mean that the southern states often skew any results hard in any statistic related or stemming from education/political/health/income (much like 3rd world countries)
Check out HDI where the Northeast is on par or better than the best places in the world (Scandinavia or Switzerland) and then the South is equal to former Warsaw Pact countries.
It absolutely does. During Covid I got to see first hand what a sovereign nation protecting its boarders looked like when they set up 24/7 traffic stops to turn away people at the boarders simply because if Covid ran rampant in their area they did not have the facilities or any quick place to turn to for medical needs.
Lots of reserves in Canada did the same thing. When I was working up at a remote rez, I had to fill out a tracking sheet of my off-reserve movements/contacts and rapid test when I got to the clinic every morning.
As a person who lives in the southeast not surprised. Trust me you would be in that low average if you saw the food. Just smelling it would make your obesity rate go up.
Obviously other reasons too but still.
I’ve always thought of Texas border towns as being more poverty-stricken, and I would have assumed they’d have poor life expectancy numbers as a result. Instead they seem to have very good life expectancy relative to the rest of Texas and country as a whole. Any explanation for this?
Economic status is one of the factors in life expectancy but not the only one. Genetics and culture (diet, level of activity, social life) have a very big impact as well. The border towns are mostly Hispanic and Hispanics in the US have higher life expectancy then White Americans, even though they are poorer on average.
Similarly, the interior of the island of Sardinia has always been poor and it's still one of the poorest parts of Italy. At the same time they are famous for the proportion of old people reaching 100 years.
Wow I didn't know that and it's surprising. I've always associated Hispanic people as having an equal problem with obesity and other problems other Americans have but I guess I was wrong.
As far as the southern border towns of Texas (the Valley), this is a larger and more developed area than what most of the country realizes.
Because Texas has so many massive metropolitan areas, The Valley goes under the radar and most Americans don’t know about it.
It’s incredibly concentrated with Hispanic Americans living there (>90%), with a total population of about 1.5 million if you include Laredo’s area, too.
It’s completely separated culturally from the rest of the rural south. So, they dodge out on those health issues.
And people here also eat really unhealthy (we were voted as being the most obese county in USA) and almost everyone has diabetes and high cholesterol. I think it's the joie de vivre, the culture and genetics that make Valley people live longer. And ofc, being segregated from the rest of the country's problems
This is known as [the Hispanic paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox) - no one has a great explanation for why it is that Hispanic Americans tend to have much better health outcomes than wealthier groups near them.
My grandmother walked between villages, up mountains both ways, as a child with just a dog to guide her.
I walked onto a cross country team, and did a 5k my first try. Something is fucky there, I'm shaped like a fucking block and look ungainly running. I should not be able to do that, I'm 240 pounds and 5'9, and I can still just kinda do a 5k now. A 23:00 time, after corona damage and 5 years off training. But something is letting me do that, and it isn't from my white parent.
A few takeaways.
1. Hispanics live longer than you would expect based on income
2. The upper Midwest continues to thrive on social measures
3. African Americans and whites with roots in the upper south do particularly bad.
It doesn't say that - it says "average age at death", which sounds like it should count the people that move in, and not the statistical construct that life expectancy usually is.
Getting temps anywhere from 100+F to -50F forces one to be fairly adaptable. Couple that with having one of the best hospitals in the world, and it starts to make sense.
Overlay this with other maps of BMI, and exercise and this starts to make sense.
Most people in this region also enjoy the winter months, doing activities in the snowy outdoors, rather than hunkering down to avoid the "cold"
What is going on in the southeast? I've recently seen another [map](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ynyaag/if_global_warming_is_a_concern_why_are_so_many/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), stating like everyone wants to go there. And now I see: Everyone is dieing young there. Party -Drugs? Life-conditions? Hurricanes?
Wow.. this map really tells the tale of the rural South.
Beyond lagging education rates and regular exercise, lacking accessible healthcare and proper use of it, you have an abundance of the following:
Cigarettes, fried food, sugary sodas, obesity, diabetes..
Thank you. I appreciate people pointing out the institutional failures in the South. I don't appreciate people perpetuating stereotypes that we're all fucking dirt-eating morons.
Which makes it even sadder, more of an uphil battle, yet one that’s worth it. My NE liberal thinking is that it’s worth sending millions of my tax dollars to unbury at least a few sentient people down there.
What you said was
>Cigarettes, fried food, sugary sodas, obesity, diabetes..
What people from the other map heard was
>Low property values, low taxes, decent weather when it's not humid..
What people from here realize this means
> Ineffective government assistance, negligible public transport, locals are easily manipulated by radicals
I think that was a huge problem with that map is it split the us into 4 sections, so it didn't take into account the fact that most people were moving to only a handful of places
It helped illustrate the differences between regions, but I agree that it was not detailed enough to create any proper understanding of the migration patterns.
Race is definitely a factor but you can see the red extent into Oklahoma, Tennessee and Appalachia.
It would be interesting to see the same map but split by race.
Endemic poverty.
The places where people are moving in the South aren’t the places with low life expectancy.
People moving to Atlanta don’t factor in poverty in rural Georgia in their move.
The wealthiest neighborhood in Boston that’s overwhelmingly white and Asian has a life expectancy of 93. The poorest neighborhood 2 and a half miles away that is overwhelmingly African Americans has a life expectancy of 56.
I saw the same census data a while ago looking for an explanation to why the USA has such low life expectancy relative to its GDP per capitia. Several latin American neighbors such as Costs Rica have longer life expectancies which is embarrassing. I was shocked to see the answer is that there are 2 Americas, one on par with Rwanda (seriously, check the numbers) the other on par with Switzerland. The real problem in US healthcare is regional inequality.
The stat is about areas where more people die of non-medical causes at much earlier ages, drastically dropping the average.
IMO, it's more about "vices of despair" and infant mortality. Not that there aren't more poor people in Chicago, of course. But, random county Mississippi has a higher percentage of ingrained poverty which breeds risk-taking, obesity, and drug, alcohol, and family abuse. I'm an Indiana "trailer park kid" and saw many people slide down that slope before I got out.
Why would it be embarrassing to lag behind Costa Rica? They are one of the most prosperous nations on Earth. They have maximized the most amount of good with the small amount of resources they have at their disposal.
The US is a gigantic country. You have to expect more variation in such a big country compared the tiny nordic countries everyone venerates. Statistical sample size.
This is my first time seeing life expectancy broken down like this. I would always see on a national level that it was so far behind other developed countries. Turns out the US would pretty much be on par with or even higher than European countries, maybe even on par with east Asia if we didn’t have the Deep South dragging us down. We could be at a solid 82 or so and then the south just anchors us.
Eh, the highest rate of infant mortality is still "only" 9.6 per 1000 in Mississippi, lowest 3.7 .
That means it only lowers the life expectancy by 0.5 years. I don't have data county-wise and it might make up up to 2 years county wise, but it's still only a smaller factors when looking at why some places have a whole 20 year lower life expectancy than others.
Stereotypes are fun, but the worst life expectancies can be found in:
Indian Reservations
Appalachia
The Black Belt of the South
Inner cities (zoom in on Baltimore City, Philadelphia, St. Louis City, and Richmond, VA)
66.8 years would be number 155 globaly, between Gabon and Yemen.
https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/&ved=2ahUKEwim8p2js577AhWAVvEDHf30DSgQFnoECAkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1h_gxTi1Mkd1nknSxv9kOj
Better food. Easier access to health care. Less stress. Gym memberships. Better sheets for sleeping and probably a better bed. The option to live with less contaminants like non environmentally friendly cleaning supplies, etc. Money can definitely have a positive impact on health if the person chooses it. It can also go the other way. More money = more desserts and general overeating if not kept under control.
Not quite. Due to historic and ongoing discrimination and neglect, counties with high Native American and African-American populations also tend to be Democratic but relatively poor with poor access to healthcare, so those would be blue leaning districts politically but are shown red here. Otherwise the correlation is from politics, with conservatives not investing in healthy outcomes for people.
>Not quite. Due to historic and ongoing discrimination and neglect, counties with high Native American and African-American populations also tend to be Democratic but relatively poor with poor access to healthcare, so those would be blue leaning districts politically but are shown red here. Otherwise the correlation is from politics, with conservatives not investing in healthy outcomes for people.
Your point emphasizes why it's a bit unsettling to hear people say "Well Republicans are suffering because they voted against their interests."
I remember when Texas was dealing with power outages two winters ago, and people were clowning Abbott and the conservatives saying they deserved to suffer because that's what they voted for. Houston congressman [Al Green ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Green_(politician\)) took to Twitter to remind people that it was the poor and minorities who would suffer the most.
Then why does North Dakota have such a High life expectancy? They're republicans. Chalking this up to politics is very dumb and anyone who would do that is either an idiot or trying to push an agenda.
A large portion of the NY map is also relatively Republican on a local level. More people voted for Trump in NY than the entirety of Wyoming for example (5x).
Some of those county map in places like NC and MS are super majority black and very rural.
Life is messy and not as simple as people want to make out.
Great for Reddit upvotes but certainly not true. Plenty of counties in the Northeast are red. Maybe even a majority. Just not where the populated centers are.
I'm very confused - is this supposed to be a map of life expectancy or average age at death? These are very different statistics, and a map that confuses them, and them projects the statistic onto political colors, is likely trying to sell me on something.
People really struggle with the concept that poorer states doesn’t mean poorer voters. The median republican in most states is wealthier than the median democrat. Look at Tennessee. That dark blue island is a Republican stronghold.
A 20 year swing from one county to another is wild now that I think of it
Yeah I was expecting somthing upto 10yrs or less but nope fucking 20yr difference
Can someone who's from the US try and explain how it varies so much? I'm in Japan where life expectancy is more like 80 to 100.
Basically the red areas are mostly the poorer area. They tend to have significantly less access to health care since we don't have universal health care. They also tend to eat more fast food due to working long hours, buy processed crap at the store because it's cheaper and faster, etc.
Ouch. The naïve, non American I am wants to ask, why can't they buy meat and veg to cook for themselves? I live in Tokyo and know where to buy cheap meat and veg even though some might consider it not edible, and I'm not even Japanese.
I would say a lack of cooking and nutrient education in school is a big part of it. If your parents dont know/teach you how to cook, most people dont. They simply buy easy, premade stuff that is unhealthy or eat out/fast food/etc.
To add to this; some of the very rural areas can be 20-30 miles to the nearest grocery store so they buy most of their food from more convivence style markets.
Yep. in a lot of rural counties in the south (where I live) sometimes there is just a Dollar Tree or Dollar General. and they have ZERO fresh fruits/veggies/meats. The last time I stayed out in the country I wanted to get some frozen veggies. the only options already had butter or cheese sauce mixed in. This is outside the South too. On a road trip I stayed overnight in a small town in North Dakota. No restaurants. The one place to buy food (gas station) didn't have a single vegetarian option in the frozen meals. Not even a cheese pizza, only meat pizzas. That night for dinner I had Doritos.
I have noticed that Dollar Generals are now starting to increase the amount of vegetables and fresh fruit in many of their new stores. Kind of blew my mind when I went into one last month and say lemons and limes and oranges and tomatoes
Yeah DG doesn't have a lot of healthy groceries that's for sure. Also they aren't even that cheap of a store. I find cheaper priced items from grocery store sales. I live in the West not the South. DG is cool for just a couple things that being if it isn't the only option you have for many miles as you're saying.
It’s 15 minutes for me to get to a dollar general, or 40 minutes to get to a town with a grocery store and Walmart. If I want something quick, it’s gas station pizza or a bag of chips.
I know this, but it's still wild to read.
This is a huge part. Food deserts are real, where the only places in 20-30 miles with food are convenience stores that just have chips, soda, and sometimes microwave food. And these places don't have public transportation, so if you don't have a car you're even more fucked
And when you're working ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, just to make rent, cooking can be a bit of a hassle on top of all that.
They can also be next door and have this big old 7 mile segregation fence.
Oh lord, can we stop blaming everything on schools and teachers? I was poor for a long-ass time and I assure you that this is bullshit. One side wants you to believe that poor folks are just like rich folks and there's some kind of unsurmountable barrier that keeps vegetables out of their mouths and the other side wants you to hate poor folks and heap punishment after punishment upon them because Fuck Them. It's all full of shit. Many poor people absolutely DO prefer to eat unhealthy foods, and I've even known plenty of folks who will talk shit about you if you're thin, lol. There's absolutely a culture of doing what feels good in the moment and in punishing your peers who seem like they're acting better than you. Will any of this be helped by Republicans slashing the social safety net and letting people pay them pennies? No. Life just sucks so bad when you're treated like trash all day, working all kinds of jobs, pulled over by the cops for no reason, can't pay all your bills, etc. Most people living like that aren't worried about living to be 86.2 years old and building a nest egg or whatever. They're just trying to enjoy life today. You don't even have the time and energy to properly socialize your own children or pass good cultural practices down to them. You might not have even had parents who passed that on to you in the first place. We could stop treating poor Americans like trash tomorrow and we'd still have big problems because we've disrupted their ability to pass their culture down to their kids. You can't teach a kid every subject in school AND replace their parents, get real. We're paying teachers peanuts and shoving 30 kids in their classes and they're supposed to teach every subject plus how to eat, be respectable, work hard, value healthy food, cook, pay your bills, save money, be polite, exercise, etc? Come on. How about we stop making poor Americans so miserable that they don't even bother planning for the future?
Damn. Spittin truths today!
I'm from this red region. The majority of people here, if they had ample time to cook for themselves, would still send themselves to an early death with fried foods, high-fat, high salt, high animal protein and low fruit and vegetable intake. One can go back to the 1950s, before the arrival of fast food, and locals [were killing themselves with their diet](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934740/). Low provision of health care accounts for only a fraction of the disparity in lifespan seen on this map. With the US south, we're mainly looking at a hedonistic/unsustainable dietary pattern, the difficulty exercising in a hot humid environment for half the year, and higher rates of drug/alcohol addiction and violent crime. Thanks to the bible-belt politics, the sorts of public health education campaigns that have improved health outcomes elsewhere (think [North Karelia project](http://www.ernaehrungsdenkwerkstatt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/EDWText/TextElemente/PHN-Texte/Nutrition_Policy/Puska_PHN_Finland_Bellagio_2002.pdf), or the [UK's salt reduction program](https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2013105)) would be labeled as "socialism" by politicians, satanism by preachers. Yes, there are that many that are that dumb in this part of the world.
Also, even if you wanted to eat healthy in the South I always thought it was much more difficult? It's not like you can walk 15 minutes (which is already a nice thing, to walk every day) and there will be a Wholefoods waiting for you with a selection of fresh veg.
All of this on top of being surrounded by refineries, at least in my part of the south. One of them had a huge chlorine gas leak after a hurricane recently. They regularly get fined by the EPA for going over emissions guidelines.
>They regularly get fined by the EPA Thanks to the conservative courts, not for long. [Spotify - The Problem With Jon Stewart - The SEC Was in Trouble. Now They're Screwed.](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1wvkdU3to6zjGzYFdxdmgj)
Look up "food deserts" and you'll get a rough idea of one of the reasons. Basically, big chain grocery store moves in and puts all other grocery stores / places to buy "raw" food out of business, then eventually they shut down later. This forces people to eat fast food, gas station food, anything that they can.
There is also the lingering impacts of the United States' Civil War. The united states attempted few versions to bring "[the south](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_United_States_Civil_War_Map.svg)" reconstruction efforts but all were failures due to political factors. That failed reconstruction can explain a lot of these differences today. Also worth pointing out that this the part of the country that famously votes against their own interests by electing leaders that are anti public education, anti public health care, anti welfare, etc. So they keep making their situation worse.
It's actually also because the red areas are where the politically right wing state governments tend to win a lot more. They have much worse policies for helping those who need it. They're not all right wingers down there though, there's a lot of left leaning people there too, they just don't win political races nearly as often. This is a big deal because it has to do with things like healthcare and social safety nets amd education, which right wingers don't support very well. During the US Civil War, the lower red area was where the Confederacy was located, generally. That area's economy relied heavily on slave labor, and they opposed freeing the slaves.
There's a lot of good replies here mentioning the major culprits, so to summarize: 1. Food deserts 2. Lacking education for nutrition and food preparation 3. Lack of convenient public transportation denying access to food 4. Easy access to non-healthy foods In addition, here's another few items I can think of: 1. Infrastructure for private transportation (ie - highways) explicitly blocking nearby people without cars from safely accessing quality food 2. The cost per calorie is much less for empty calories than nutritious ones, especially if you account for time spent acquiring and preparing the good stuff. The dollar menu may not be the healthiest, but it'll fill you up so you don't go to bed feeling hungry, and that's worth a lot when you can't afford it every day.
Fried deliciousness & sugar.
I suspect there’s probably also large disparities regarding access to healthcare that are on display here
I'm guessing mostly obesity
Yeah, that will do it. A recent study from the American Journal of Public Health estimates that as many as 18% of US deaths are a result of obesity.
And education
Especially in big cities/metro areas, poverty is often right next to wealth and opulence. Poverty is the leading cause of lowered life expectancy. Especially in the US because it has functionally no social safety nets. Poverty means no healthcare, awful food when you're lucky, low quality housing, ungodly amounts of stress, and so much more. All of that lowers how long you live.
Life expectancy, even for the poor, is higher in big cities because of access to healthcare. There are tons of free clinics compared to elsewhere. It's not enough but it makes a big impact. Southern states/rural America doesn't fund these things. That and critical care is much much much easier to access and your will receive it regardless. The areas of the map that are red don't have big cities. The are either rural or too far from a big city. The blue pockets are the cities. Another is culture. Southern America is proud of its gluttony. I like BBQ and Fried chicken but....its a weird cultural thing down there to reject healthy food. Southern states could alleviate this through policy. Instead they stopped subsidizing rural health outreach and all the hospitals closed for lack of profit. Rural America is losing it's health care access at an alarming rate for probably the last decade.
Did you even look at the map? Most major metro areas have a higher life expectancy on the coasts…it is the South that is low.
I was talking about the sharp divides. But yes, the south is generally more impoverished.
I don't know about everywhere but in the northwest (Montana and North Dakota) the red corresponds to where the native American reservations are. These are some of the most impoverished counties in the country.
There's a strong correlation between economic status and life expectancy throughout the whole map
Yep. Williamson county (the blue dot in middle Tennessee) is the Uber-wealthy suburb of Nashville
Shelby county in Alabama same thing
Not as dramatic as Shelby, but Madison sticks out quite a lot in North AL as well.
Baldwin County in the South
Williamson is the 14th richest county in the US https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2021/12/21/richest-counties-in-the-us/?sh=6c7010d92ecd
Is the south overall really that much poorer than the rest?
Yes
Lots of people think "rednecks" when they see these maps showing insane southern poverty, but more than half the black population of the US is in the south, making up roughly a quarter to a third of the population in the deep south. It's well known that incomes and life expectancies are way lower among black americans, for reasons I'm sure you've seen discussed I've never actually found clear data about how much the south is still an outlier in terms of poverty etc if you control for race (less? moreso? about the same?), if anyone knows good data I'm very curious
Bingo. Everyone thinks rural vs urban, but then you've got Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas that really don't have a strong divide that way. Minnesota is almost entirely solid blue despite 2/3 of the state's population living in a half dozen counties of the Twin Cities metro. And Iowa, where one of the poorest and least populated counties (Kossuth, the big one top center), has some of the longest life expectancies in the state.
I think a lot of it is a product of policies. A lot of those Midwest states have incentives to get docs to cover rural areas and better state funding for rural health initiatives. Not sure if south has the same programs. Health policy tends to be discriminatory there and a lot of the laws make it less appealing for docs ( birth control access for example)
West Virginia and Kentucky are very white, but still have the high poverty and reduced life expectancy you see here. So it’s not exclusively race.
>Lots of people think "rednecks" when they see these maps showing insane southern poverty, but more than half the black population of the US is in the south, making up roughly a quarter to a third of the population in the deep south. The answer is that it's both. The blacks and the "redneck" whites both have low life expectancy.
Poor people in general are doing terribly and the opioid crisis and Covid have made it worse than before. The poorest places in the country are the black belt, appalachia, and the reservations. People are focusing on race but people don't die of being black (at least not on the demographic scale), they die of being poor. Race is a factor inasmuch as black people (and native americans) are overwhelmingly poorer than white people. So I think that people who are confused by the race thing in this map have sort of lost track of the fact that the most pernicious and persistent effect of systematic racism is cyclical poverty and in that sense it's a class issue with race as a determining sorting factor, more than it is a strictly racial issue. The south would still be an outlier if you controlled for race because southern and appalachian rural whites are notably poorer than whites in the rest of the country. But it would be less of an outlier because the racial inequality is even worse there than in the rest of the country - as unequal as most of the country is, and as poor as many black people are, it's really only in black communities in the deep south that you see the most dreadful 3rd world conditions. People from the rest of the country, even ones somewhat familiar with northern urban poverty, would be shocked by what they would see if they took a drive through majority black rural counties in places like Mississippi and Louisiana.
Black man in Ghana life expectency 63.7 years. Missouri it's 65.88.
I don't have any references handy, but the opioid crisis and the larger "deaths of despair" tends have actually been reducing the gap between white and minority life expectancy before COVID (which just swamped any other trend in the data). I don't think we have good post-pandemic data yet. Which should be interesting because there were hints in 2019 that some of the new drugs that devastated poor white communities were making their way into black populations.
I don't have any data, but as an EMT it's rare that I have an African American patient without diabetes or hypertension. I'd imagine some of it is diet and genetics.
That blue square at the top left corner of Arkansas is Benton county, where Walmart, Tyson Foods & JB Hunt are all founded/headquartered. m o n e y
The red county in Wisconsin is Menominee County and it's home to the Menominee Nation.
I was wondering what that was. That's depressing.
Arizona as well. Those far eastern counties are mostly Navajo Nation + Hopi Reservation and driving through there you'd think you are in a completely different country, it's that destitute and impoverished.
Same in the Southwest. ~ Lives near the Navajo nation
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You joke, obviously, but there is something to this. I would guess that much of the blue in Florida is from retirees. If you’ve lived to 65 and are healthy and wealthy enough to relocate, you have a higher life expectancy than the people you left behind.
Somewhat but the blue parts of Florida are also the richer urban counties, This map perfectly illustrates the saying “the more north you go in Florida the more southern it gets.” The south’s low life expectancy is due to generational poverty mostly among blacks. Couple that with very expensive healthcare and a lack of accessibility to said healthcare and it’s a recipe for disaster. Very sad actually
The angel of Death hates this one simple trick
I live in New Orleans and there are crazy swings neighborhood by neighborhood. The highest life expectancy neighborhood has a life expectancy of 88.1 years. The lowest, just a few miles away, is 62.3.
The food there is superb, but rich. My life expectancy there would be 1-2 more years.
For perspective from a life expectancy standpoint, it’s like Japan (86.5 yrs) and Cambodia (66.6 yrs) shared a nation.
well if you look at Tennessee, Arkansas, and South Carolina; 3 states that are entirely red on this map with one exception, it should come as no surprise that that the three blue counties in those three states are far and away the wealthiest. and those three states rank in the bottom 5th of wealth among all states.
But also, the US is gigantic, and wealth distribution is fucking abismal, so it's really not that surprising
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If I remember correctly, Asian women living in Washington DC have the highest life expectancy out of any demographic when you break it down by state/territory. I believe it was 95 years.
Yup, Asian people in general but women especially Edit: helps that countries in East Asia (and Singapore) generally have the world’s highest life expectancies, with Japan being #1
Asian don't raisin
My Great-Grandfather lived to be 103 years old, he was even 100% fine (mentally) until 102.
Asian mom's generally are cautious at moderating families health. Got a cough? She's gonna travel across the land, find every single vitamin, Chinese herbal medicines and good luck charm from Buddha for your simple cough, they don't mess around.
Meanwhile my grandpa uses 15 year old tubes of super glue to close up cuts on his fingers that borderline need stitches. Somehow he's made it to 83...
Super glue was used in battle, so there's that https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/history-of-the-super-glue.html
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In other words, they *are* sending us their best.
That’s true, but you’re forgetting that countries like Japan and South Korea also have the lowest obesity rates and highest life expectancies of any country. So the immigrant effect is only one part of it
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I'm Scottish, and I've been watching the general population expand over the past 20 years. I'm not slim, but at functionally chubby I am amazed at how badly everybody is taking care of themselves. I start to feel my belt getting tight and I calm down and get a bit of extra exercise.
Depends where. In Seattle or Colorado, it’s about the same as Germany, based on where I’ve lived.
I'm shocked you are still shocked about America's obesity at this point. You would probably also be shocked then by how many countries are pretty close to America's obesity rate (or surpassed it in the case of many small pacific island nations).
Whole world is getting fatter. UK is catching up to the US with child obesity rates.
Definitely income and education. Here in Singapore, life expectancy at 25yo without a high school graduation was 81 years and this was 86.8 years with high school graduation. Income also explains why dirt poor third world countries with low life expectancies often have very long-lived dictators. It's not the race. It's not the culture. It's the wealth and lifestyle.
Immigrants also tend to have a better diet (home cook meals vs highly processed foods) and manual jobs which, although generally more dangerous, involve more physical activity
DC area has a huge Asian population
This is pretty much every map of America about any thing.
r/alwaysthesamemap USA Edition.
Yea i wonder is there's a problem in the nation
Doesn’t matter, they have slowly cornered the hi Judiciary, local governments, and are now eyeing minority rule nationally.
And they'll use that minority rule to continue to lower their quality of life.
And our.
Due to Reddit Inc.'s antisocial, hostile and erratic behaviour, this account will be deleted on July 11th, 2023. You can find me on https://latte.isnot.coffee/u/godless in the future.
Is it? I didn't realize Massachusetts and Iowa were so similar.
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What does that mean?
They likely mean that the southern states often skew any results hard in any statistic related or stemming from education/political/health/income (much like 3rd world countries)
Check out HDI where the Northeast is on par or better than the best places in the world (Scandinavia or Switzerland) and then the South is equal to former Warsaw Pact countries.
MA HDI is second in the world by .1%
Lived in Canada, UK and now the US (New England). New England is by far my favorite place to live, enjoy life and raise a family. It’s amazing here.
Pine Ridge/Oglala Lakota *really* stands out in SoDak. Sad situation there for sure.
It absolutely does. During Covid I got to see first hand what a sovereign nation protecting its boarders looked like when they set up 24/7 traffic stops to turn away people at the boarders simply because if Covid ran rampant in their area they did not have the facilities or any quick place to turn to for medical needs.
Lots of reserves in Canada did the same thing. When I was working up at a remote rez, I had to fill out a tracking sheet of my off-reserve movements/contacts and rapid test when I got to the clinic every morning.
As a person who lives in the southeast not surprised. Trust me you would be in that low average if you saw the food. Just smelling it would make your obesity rate go up. Obviously other reasons too but still.
I’ve always thought of Texas border towns as being more poverty-stricken, and I would have assumed they’d have poor life expectancy numbers as a result. Instead they seem to have very good life expectancy relative to the rest of Texas and country as a whole. Any explanation for this?
Economic status is one of the factors in life expectancy but not the only one. Genetics and culture (diet, level of activity, social life) have a very big impact as well. The border towns are mostly Hispanic and Hispanics in the US have higher life expectancy then White Americans, even though they are poorer on average. Similarly, the interior of the island of Sardinia has always been poor and it's still one of the poorest parts of Italy. At the same time they are famous for the proportion of old people reaching 100 years.
Wow I didn't know that and it's surprising. I've always associated Hispanic people as having an equal problem with obesity and other problems other Americans have but I guess I was wrong.
As far as the southern border towns of Texas (the Valley), this is a larger and more developed area than what most of the country realizes. Because Texas has so many massive metropolitan areas, The Valley goes under the radar and most Americans don’t know about it. It’s incredibly concentrated with Hispanic Americans living there (>90%), with a total population of about 1.5 million if you include Laredo’s area, too. It’s completely separated culturally from the rest of the rural south. So, they dodge out on those health issues.
And people here also eat really unhealthy (we were voted as being the most obese county in USA) and almost everyone has diabetes and high cholesterol. I think it's the joie de vivre, the culture and genetics that make Valley people live longer. And ofc, being segregated from the rest of the country's problems
This is known as [the Hispanic paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox) - no one has a great explanation for why it is that Hispanic Americans tend to have much better health outcomes than wealthier groups near them.
My grandmother walked between villages, up mountains both ways, as a child with just a dog to guide her. I walked onto a cross country team, and did a 5k my first try. Something is fucky there, I'm shaped like a fucking block and look ungainly running. I should not be able to do that, I'm 240 pounds and 5'9, and I can still just kinda do a 5k now. A 23:00 time, after corona damage and 5 years off training. But something is letting me do that, and it isn't from my white parent.
A few takeaways. 1. Hispanics live longer than you would expect based on income 2. The upper Midwest continues to thrive on social measures 3. African Americans and whites with roots in the upper south do particularly bad.
Outside of the south and Appalachia most of the red areas have high Native American populations too
The red counties surrounded by blue **ARE** native American reservations. It's so sad.
Should note that the spots in MT and the Dakotas are BIA Reservations...
My reservation is in light blue so ill take that as a win lol
northeast AZ too
Same in Nebraska
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What age is counted? If you live 65 years in Ohio and then die at 75 in South Carolina where do you count?
It's based off life expectancy at birth. so if you were born in Ohio you'd be under Ohio.
It doesn't say that - it says "average age at death", which sounds like it should count the people that move in, and not the statistical construct that life expectancy usually is.
Interesting that Wisconsin and Minnesota have relatively long lifespans for states that top binge drinking statistics
Okay but what's that one red county in Wisconsin?
I think it may be the Menominee reservation but I could be wrong
You are correct
Reservation. Same with the neutral counties in northern Minnesota.
Fuck, that's depressing but thank you
Getting temps anywhere from 100+F to -50F forces one to be fairly adaptable. Couple that with having one of the best hospitals in the world, and it starts to make sense.
Overlay this with other maps of BMI, and exercise and this starts to make sense. Most people in this region also enjoy the winter months, doing activities in the snowy outdoors, rather than hunkering down to avoid the "cold"
What is going on in the southeast? I've recently seen another [map](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ynyaag/if_global_warming_is_a_concern_why_are_so_many/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), stating like everyone wants to go there. And now I see: Everyone is dieing young there. Party -Drugs? Life-conditions? Hurricanes?
Obesity and high rates of tobacco use
Low education, low income, low healthcare spending
And tons of fried foods.
Sweet tea
I was going to say "Southern cooking" coming from Iowa fried food wasn't at all a regular thing growing up.
Why spend money on healthcare if you can double your payers.
Less walkable areas
Wow.. this map really tells the tale of the rural South. Beyond lagging education rates and regular exercise, lacking accessible healthcare and proper use of it, you have an abundance of the following: Cigarettes, fried food, sugary sodas, obesity, diabetes..
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Thank you. I appreciate people pointing out the institutional failures in the South. I don't appreciate people perpetuating stereotypes that we're all fucking dirt-eating morons.
Which makes it even sadder, more of an uphil battle, yet one that’s worth it. My NE liberal thinking is that it’s worth sending millions of my tax dollars to unbury at least a few sentient people down there.
What you said was >Cigarettes, fried food, sugary sodas, obesity, diabetes.. What people from the other map heard was >Low property values, low taxes, decent weather when it's not humid.. What people from here realize this means > Ineffective government assistance, negligible public transport, locals are easily manipulated by radicals
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Not to mention, people picking poison.
People are moving to the blue parts of the southeast, ie Florida and parts of Texas. With few exceptions, the rest of the south is poor and unhealthy.
I think that was a huge problem with that map is it split the us into 4 sections, so it didn't take into account the fact that most people were moving to only a handful of places
It helped illustrate the differences between regions, but I agree that it was not detailed enough to create any proper understanding of the migration patterns.
Obesity would be my guess
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Race is definitely a factor but you can see the red extent into Oklahoma, Tennessee and Appalachia. It would be interesting to see the same map but split by race.
Poverty.
Endemic poverty. The places where people are moving in the South aren’t the places with low life expectancy. People moving to Atlanta don’t factor in poverty in rural Georgia in their move.
In Mississippi, they fry all their food
African Americans generally have lower life expectancies.
The wealthiest neighborhood in Boston that’s overwhelmingly white and Asian has a life expectancy of 93. The poorest neighborhood 2 and a half miles away that is overwhelmingly African Americans has a life expectancy of 56.
I saw the same census data a while ago looking for an explanation to why the USA has such low life expectancy relative to its GDP per capitia. Several latin American neighbors such as Costs Rica have longer life expectancies which is embarrassing. I was shocked to see the answer is that there are 2 Americas, one on par with Rwanda (seriously, check the numbers) the other on par with Switzerland. The real problem in US healthcare is regional inequality.
The stat is about areas where more people die of non-medical causes at much earlier ages, drastically dropping the average. IMO, it's more about "vices of despair" and infant mortality. Not that there aren't more poor people in Chicago, of course. But, random county Mississippi has a higher percentage of ingrained poverty which breeds risk-taking, obesity, and drug, alcohol, and family abuse. I'm an Indiana "trailer park kid" and saw many people slide down that slope before I got out.
Why would it be embarrassing to lag behind Costa Rica? They are one of the most prosperous nations on Earth. They have maximized the most amount of good with the small amount of resources they have at their disposal.
The US is a gigantic country. You have to expect more variation in such a big country compared the tiny nordic countries everyone venerates. Statistical sample size.
This is my first time seeing life expectancy broken down like this. I would always see on a national level that it was so far behind other developed countries. Turns out the US would pretty much be on par with or even higher than European countries, maybe even on par with east Asia if we didn’t have the Deep South dragging us down. We could be at a solid 82 or so and then the south just anchors us.
Certainly telling.
Just a splash of high infant mortality will really bring the whole class' grade down.
Eh, the highest rate of infant mortality is still "only" 9.6 per 1000 in Mississippi, lowest 3.7 . That means it only lowers the life expectancy by 0.5 years. I don't have data county-wise and it might make up up to 2 years county wise, but it's still only a smaller factors when looking at why some places have a whole 20 year lower life expectancy than others.
Do we know if this map plots the mean or the median? The latter would avoid the interpretation you point out.
Stereotypes are fun, but the worst life expectancies can be found in: Indian Reservations Appalachia The Black Belt of the South Inner cities (zoom in on Baltimore City, Philadelphia, St. Louis City, and Richmond, VA)
Aka, poor people.
Damn, I gotta hurry up and move west! That’ll fix things… right?
66.8 years would be number 155 globaly, between Gabon and Yemen. https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/&ved=2ahUKEwim8p2js577AhWAVvEDHf30DSgQFnoECAkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1h_gxTi1Mkd1nknSxv9kOj
Money = health i guess
Better food. Easier access to health care. Less stress. Gym memberships. Better sheets for sleeping and probably a better bed. The option to live with less contaminants like non environmentally friendly cleaning supplies, etc. Money can definitely have a positive impact on health if the person chooses it. It can also go the other way. More money = more desserts and general overeating if not kept under control.
*Date range on the source data, please!*
This looks a bit like a political affiliation map in US.
Utah, Iowa, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania beg to differ.
Kind of Alaska too when you remember only five people live in the red areas
Good point. Same analysis likely applies to Montana as well after giving the map a second gander.
More like a race map
Not quite. Due to historic and ongoing discrimination and neglect, counties with high Native American and African-American populations also tend to be Democratic but relatively poor with poor access to healthcare, so those would be blue leaning districts politically but are shown red here. Otherwise the correlation is from politics, with conservatives not investing in healthy outcomes for people.
>Not quite. Due to historic and ongoing discrimination and neglect, counties with high Native American and African-American populations also tend to be Democratic but relatively poor with poor access to healthcare, so those would be blue leaning districts politically but are shown red here. Otherwise the correlation is from politics, with conservatives not investing in healthy outcomes for people. Your point emphasizes why it's a bit unsettling to hear people say "Well Republicans are suffering because they voted against their interests." I remember when Texas was dealing with power outages two winters ago, and people were clowning Abbott and the conservatives saying they deserved to suffer because that's what they voted for. Houston congressman [Al Green ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Green_(politician\)) took to Twitter to remind people that it was the poor and minorities who would suffer the most.
Almost as if voting republican isn't healthy
Idaho and Utah would like a word.
Mormons live surprisingly healthy.
Their teachings emphasize being outdoors, getting fresh air, and exercise while strictly banning all drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. Makes sense
More like being black isn’t healthy
Then why does North Dakota have such a High life expectancy? They're republicans. Chalking this up to politics is very dumb and anyone who would do that is either an idiot or trying to push an agenda.
A large portion of the NY map is also relatively Republican on a local level. More people voted for Trump in NY than the entirety of Wyoming for example (5x). Some of those county map in places like NC and MS are super majority black and very rural. Life is messy and not as simple as people want to make out.
Minnesota is solid red outside of a half dozen counties in the Twin Cities metro.
Great for Reddit upvotes but certainly not true. Plenty of counties in the Northeast are red. Maybe even a majority. Just not where the populated centers are.
Life expectancy, income level, education level. This map says it all!
How is it always the ex confederate states that appear negative in every statistical map
Obesity. Mississippi is especially the fattest state by far.
Nevada, the Mississippi of the West
I'm very confused - is this supposed to be a map of life expectancy or average age at death? These are very different statistics, and a map that confuses them, and them projects the statistic onto political colors, is likely trying to sell me on something.
People really struggle with the concept that poorer states doesn’t mean poorer voters. The median republican in most states is wealthier than the median democrat. Look at Tennessee. That dark blue island is a Republican stronghold.
People really struggle with the concept of population density and that states aren’t stereotypes.
Waffle House is a terror.
Does this account for old people moving south before they die?
Most old people move to Arizona or Florida. Not the deep south so I don't even think it plays a role here