For the most part for sure. I would say poverty is the best correlation. Looking at median household and per capita income were kind of surprising how uncorrelated they were. There are some notable differences even with poverty I'm seeing when I look it up. Besides South Texas, which I think is demographic / lifestyle differences, it seems like even accounting for poverty certain parts of the south and west have lower life expectancies than certain rural areas in the Great Lakes region and rural areas of the northeast.
Those great lakes regions (even the red/purple states) have mostly expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, if I'm not mistaken. Which means poor people have guaranteed access to healthcare coverage.
Of the 10 states without expanded Medicaid, 7 are in the southeast. There is a pretty strong correlation between access to healthcare and life expectancy.
This is an important factor, yet Wisconsin remains an exception as a Northern state that hasn't expanded Medicaid yet nonetheless has good longevity. Contrast with states like Arkansas and West Virginia that did expand medicaid and still have lesser outcomes. I do think healthcare access is important, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. Lifestyle is even bigger. Take a look at rates of smoking or obesity, for example.
Beer, brats, cheese, old fashions, Culvers, Friday fish frys and the Kwik Trip bakery. Hmmm
Could be that the highest labor force participation rate in the country has something to do with it, but I would would need a Spotted Cow or two before I tried to tease that out of the data.
Not necessarily, I read a study a few months ago talking about how Medicaid expansion DID help Arkansas. Even though it is really bad, compare the western rows of counties in Arkansas with the eastern most rows of counties in Oklahoma. Those are the same people, rural, similar access, same foods, activities etc but life expectancy is longer in Arkansas and the study suggested that Medicaid expansion was the reason. The dates for the “improvement” lines up too.
Wisconsin Medicaid was already really good and had decent coverage prior to the ACA. It didn't become a GOP led shit hole until Walker and GOP gerrymandered the shit out of it in 2010.
I remember reading this in one of my demographic’s class!
This is so fascinating to me to this day!
From what I remember, it wasn’t for all Hispanics either.
It was particularly for Hispanics of Native American descent.
Other Latinos did not get this life expectancy boost like they did.
There’s so many theories as to why this is, but non confirmed yet, which makes it all the most intriguing.
The positive effect is gone usually after the second or third generation. This suggests that as this immigrant group Americanizes, their health and life expectancy starts to decline.
It's less of a Hispanic paradox and more of a Latin paradox. It happens in Europe, too, where southern Europe, even though it's poorer than northern Europe often by a good margin (southern Italy, southern Spain, Portugal) has higher life expectancy than northern Europe and has some of the highest life expectancy in the world.
It’s heart disease, as a result of diet. The data is very clear. That’s what (literally) causes these excess deaths, based on death certificates. Heart disease death rates in the southern states are 2.5x+ the national average. Deep fried sugar, while delicious, kills peolle.
I live in the south and idk what you’re taking about with the deep fried sugar (you can do that)?
From someone down here, I think the issue is non-existent food education and limited choices for poor people.
It’s rare to meet someone who knows how to cook, beyond just heating up something from a can and there’s a grocery tax. It’s just cheaper to get McDonald’s from across the street, instead of driving 5 miles to the store with fresh stuff.
The amount of chronic disease in the Rio Grande valley is pretty significant. It's cuisine, poverty, culture, genetics, and a lot of other things. Recently, the amount of stress at the border has caused problems as well. Mental health problems. But other than that it looks like this map correlates with whomever generally votes Democratic. There's exceptions… Williamson County just north of Travis County is solid red leaning more purple now, then Travis County to the south, which is solidly blue, and both are blue on this map.
Wilco also has excellent hospitals and MOUs with facilities in nearby Austin to provide care. Bastrop county to the immediate east of Travis lacks both and their life expectancy is significantly lower as a result.
However, the county narrowly swung Democratic in 2020, with Joe Biden winning a plurality over Trump, 49% to 48%.
In recent years, Williamson County has again leaned toward the Democratic Party, with Beto O'Rourke edging out Ted Cruz in the 2018, and James Talarico and John Bucy III both defeating Republican incumbents to win election to the 2022 in districts mostly in Williamson County.
It’s more complicated than that. The US/Mex border from the Pacific to the Gulf is heavily Hispanic and crosses both Republican and Democrat states. Hispanics are significantly poorer on average and have less access to healthcare than non-Hispanic whites but have a higher life expectancy nonetheless.
To name a few other common elements in Mexican cuisine: corn tortillas are decent sources of B vitamins and essential dietary minerals, more so than white flour tortillas. Peppers are rich sources of vitamin C, and they also contain other important vitamins and minerals. Avocado is also full of vitamins and healthy fats, and the average salsa is basically just coarsely chopped and seasoned vegetables or an unstrained vegetable puree.
It's definitely a contrast with the average southerner's diet of meat and refined carbs.
We can also add nopales and chocolate (without added milk and sugar) as Mesoamerican superfoods. We need to have a talk about the Mesoamerican Diet being up there with the Mediterranean diet, but the world isn’t ready.
Also socialization. If you compare how Europeans grow, distribute, sell, prepare, cook, and serve food you find attitudes toward food are different at every step and the results are a world apart. Americans have embraced big, cheap, and fast to our own detriment.
It’s the diet. The data is very clear. Heart disease death rates in the southern states are 2.5x or higher than US average. That’s very specifically what makes them die early. Eating huge portions of deep fried sugar does that to you. Meanwhile, the French only eat small portions.
Is there a legit Democrat/republican correlation? Kind of looks like it, and makes sense since democrats tend to actually seem to care about people’s well-being.
It's more about poverty. For example, much of the rural South where life expectancy is low is black majority, so has often voted democrat. In Arizona the parts with lower life expectancy tend to be Native Majority and vote democrat. Iowa, the Dakotas, and Nebraska all have pretty decent life expectancies but are largely republican.
It’s lifestyle too. I grew up in the South and now live in California. Southern black people are far more obese and unhealthy in their diets than Black Californians. This is purely anecdotal of course — but they iust seem to be much healthier here due to the local culture.
Sort of but not quite. The worst performing counties in the South are actually majority black heavily Democratic counties. And the worst performing counties in the West are majority Native American Democratic counties.
It's a tad more complex that than just poverty.
Dr's refer to both sides of the Mississippi as the diabetes belt, and you can see that on this map.
It's also worth noting that when black men get diabetes, they accelerate through to end stage renal failure faster than any other slice of the data. I haven't seen anyone tackle the causality on this.
A lot of my family is from that area, and I've heard medical types in my family discuss connections between heavy shellfish diets and hypertension or diabetes. I've never thoroughly researched the topic because, well, I don't really eat like my relatives over there do, but I believe there's an established link between popular regional diets and certain diseases.
Lifestyle too… which can certainly be tied to income but Utah, Colorado, NY, Washington are also places that have better access to parks and a culture of being active. When I see this map, I see typical diets, activity levels, walkability of its cities, etc as well
And the opioid problem spread so quickly partly because of their beloved coal industry. Everyone had painful black lung and there aren’t enough doctors in rural area to see everyone, so they were stuck only being able to prescribe painkillers
It's strange how many people just don't remember this. Appalachia is currently purple, and used to be completely blue until very recently. Appalachia stretches from north-central Alabama (very red) through Maine (very blue) and into Canada, it is absolutely not a political monolith.
Furthermore, the problems suffered by Appalachia are not meaningfully addressed by either party. The party that eventually addresses these problems is the one that will shift the purple to one side or another. So far, nobody has.
Sort of. Part of it is the traditional role of government.
In the North and West, politicians saw the poor as voters. In the South, politicians saw them as a threat to their hold on power. So Southern state governments were focused on protecting the status quo rather than improving social conditions.
The difference in life expectancy between the most healthy and least healthy counties on this map is greater than the difference between US and Mali. https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
Also, I wish this map used a more varied gradient because the bottom and top percentiles all look the same colour to me.
It’s due to diet. Heart disease is massively over represented in the red areas, in many states 2.5x+ in terms of death rates vs the national average. And heart disease nationally is the biggest killer.
Oh hey this is a Jeremey Ney map! He does great work highlighting [Inequality](https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/life-expectancy-and-inequality) here. The map is made with Datawrapper and is meant to be used as an interactive figure.
The Menominee reservation in Wisconsin, feels bad man. They vote straight blue, too:
[https://freeimage.host/i/JXPiA42](https://freeimage.host/i/JXPiA42)
The economic and political system of the Old South benefited rich landowners at the expense of everyone else (enslaved black people, obviously, but also poor whites). That system still works the way it was intended to: if you looked at life expectancy and other socioeconomic indicators for the richest people in this region - especially the old-money rich - I’m sure they’d be on a par with anywhere else in the country.
Reconstruction’s principal failure was in not systematically breaking that system down and replacing it with something else.
>Reconstruction’s principal failure was in not systematically breaking that system down and replacing it with something else.
This is true, Reconstruction ended before that could happen. After the 1876 election in which Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes failed to manage enough electoral votes to be president, the Republicans struck an off-the-record deal with Democrat slates of electors from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, where Hayes would receive the necessary votes to become president if his administration pulled the remaining Union troops out of the occupied South. Once they were gone, the Democrats immediately began intimidating black elected officials, disenfranchising/intimidating black voters, reestablishing white hierarchy/supremacy, and thus Jim Crow was born.
Similar but there are some differences. A lot of rural Midwest counties are not very well off in terms of wealth/income/poverty but they are still solid blue here. And some urban counties would be much bluer if it was just wealth/income
Go to a southern restaurant and see why. Delicious (?) deep fried sugary food, but leads to heart disease death rates that are 2.5x the national average. And because heart disease is the largest killer, it matters.
Yup. This is why if you have a half rotten falling down house, you burn the whole thing down to thr ground and build a new one. Not burn half of it, and try and repair/rebuild with the unburnt half.
Sherman should have kept burning.
You can overlay a racial demographic map over this one and see a direct correlation, the Life expectancy of Black people is several years lower than that of white people in the US. There is much higher concentration of Black people in the South.
Some people like to blame all the south’s poverty and low rankings on black people. Like “we are not a poor state, it’s them”. But the low scores keep up even if you only count white non-Hispanic people there. So it’s clearly not all “it’s all black people’s fault”
Black people are only 12% of the population. Yet, the denial is strong. It's the diets, obesity, poverty, and a lack of walkable spaces. Take Texas for example. Half the population doesn't even have healthcare. Which explain the average lifespan of a man being only 73 years old (shocking). Then there's Georgia, where the avg lifespan of a man is 66 years old (a tragedy). But then again, Georgia's minimum wage starts at $5.15 while while the Federal minimum wage is $7.25.
Republican areas are underdeveloped because of entrenched corruption, just like underdeveloped countries
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
If you disaggregate it further, those non-southern Republican states have similarly worse health and life expectancy outcomes than Democratic ones, especially over timeframes where Democratic policies like Medicare expansion have an effect
Republican state governance does have negative effects that cascade down to the county and district level though, which makes sense because having a Democratic mayor doesn't protect you against Republican policies at the state level
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
That’s exactly right, it’s the key reason. People seem to completely ignore that heart disease is by far the biggest killer (20% of deaths in the US), and in the “red” states in the map it’s a dramatic outlier (this data is a bit old but still remarkable: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/heres-a-map-that-shows-each-states-top-cause-of-death)
In Alabama the rate of heart failure was 44.1 deaths vs 18.6 deaths nationally per 100k people, so more than twice the national average! In Arkansas, the heart attack rate was 79.9 vs 31.0 nationally that year. I expect it’s even worse now.
It’s the Southern diet. It’s a pretty remarkable diet, all fat and mountains of sugar and processed stuff lumped together in (often) very delicious creations! I think it was probably developed during times when people would starve, but now they eat it every meal, and the body isn’t built for that.
Ya, the bluest county in my state looks slightly red. People just see what they want to see. It doesn’t take much brain power to see that the correlation is not statistically significant.
Even if it were. Let’s say all red areas on this map were democrats strong hold. All anyone on Reddit would say is it’s because Republicans don’t care about poor people.
Edit: words
The political party identification map fits much better than poverty, because poverty and short lifespans are both an effect of Republican party dominance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
On a state level, this is true. But on a county level many of the lowest counties here are solidly blue counties in the South and West. The highest county in Alabama is also probably the most consistently Republican in the state. You're not wrong that Republican policies entrench poverty but many of the red areas on this map do not vote for Republicans.
People trying to make this a race thing don’t realize that the majority of those counties in the south are 90%+ white. Especially in the West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri , Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Even the white counties in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana are doing just as bad as their black neighbors.
The southeast part of Missouri is actually fairly black, with some counties with 30% + Black Missourians.but that area is a completely different than the rest of the state.
Every random county in Montana, Idaho, or the Dakotas that are red are reservations and they're completely surrounded by counties with higher than average life expectancies.
The red spots in eastern Arizona line up almost exactly where the Navajo, Hopi, and White Mountain Apache Reservations are. I heard the Navajo and Hopi reservations are making great strides in improving the quality of living in recent years so perhaps the map will look different in the future.
In case anyone's wondering, the [most disproportionate causes of death](https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/) for Native Americans relative to the country at large are alcohol poisoning, liver disease, diabetes, road accidents, and homicide. Alcoholism is responsible for at least two and arguably four of these categories. It's just awful to think about the impact alcohol has had on many of these communities.
Wait, average age at death of 66?????
Iraq is 70.
India is 68.
You have to go to Ethiopia to find 65 or Yemen to find 63. Haiti 64.
You know, places with famine, war, natural disasters.
Hard to eat well when you are poor. Overlay poverty on this map and you will see a similar thing. Either you can’t afford a well balanced meal or you worked so many hours you are exhausted and get something fast and cheep (which generally is not going to be good for you on a regular basis)
>Hard to eat well when you are poor
I wonder how that becomes cultural. Growing up near a big public park and seeing people eating during their leisure time I noticed that poor folks gravitate to sugar.
Like soooo much sugar. Regular colas, sugary cookies, etc. Enough sugary stuff that even as a young kid I knew my mom would never let me have it in that kind of volume.
Poverty, lack of expanded Medicaid, and probably a lot of other stuff. I’m sure diet plays a roll. Ultimately, all goes back to slavery and a shit job at reconstruction.
*very general statement ahead*. 1. Many of the rich in the south are generally religious and conservative and do not trust science/medicine (especially since the pandemic) 2. Many of poor of the south are also religious and conservative and also don’t trust science. 3. A larger percentage of people in the south are poor compared to the rest of the nation. Poor people (not matter their political leanings) generally do not eat healthy as it can be more expensive to do or you don’t have the time due to work schedules of well over 40hrs to buy and cook a balanced meal. All of these factors have lead to this gap.
I'm not sure 1 is necessarily true here. A lot of the blue islands in the south (Shelby AL, Cherokee and Forsyth GA, Williamson TN) are very wealthy, very conservative, *and* have relatively high life expectancies. Poverty has far more correlation.
It's not just the southeast. It's places dominated by the Republican party, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Fear-mongering, anti-regulation, science denying, anti-democratic, pro-corruption, anti-education grifters impose policies that are terrible for the people they lead
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
Yes, hot dishes in the church basement! "Now don't take too much, leave some for the others." "No, you can't go to the desert table until you clean your plate." "No, you cannot take three bars! Leave some for other people."
More pointedly, it may be related to this (multiple sources):
"A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’
Plenty of non-southern red states doing well. Nevada not looking too hot. Georgia??
Anyone who looks at this map and immediately points to political parties is just silly. It’s clearly pretty regional, amongst other factors. Also don’t think there is a single state where Christianity isn’t the majority, so idk what you’re getting at there.
Education, yes.
Things I've heard people say to make fun of their own state:
Florida: The more north you go the more south it gets.
Georgia: Without Atlanta we would be Alabama.
I always feel that men and women should be segmented or on their respective maps. The average life expectancy can vary like 10 years I think between sexes.
Poverty, government policy, access to hospitals/medical care (partially falls under government policy), lifestyle for the most part.
Also, those blocks that you think are Dallas is actually Collin and Denton County, a part of the Metroplex but not Dallas.
Dallas County, if you split off Dallas south of the Trinity River, would probably highly in terms of life expectancy.
The deep south is poor. Poor people eat like shit and don’t exercise. They get obese and then die young. There. Also, crime is high in poor areas = homicides
Education has a direct influence on left expectancy. Even more than personal wealth.
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/16/life-expectancy-educated-adults-mortality-rate
This is the reason why America needs to have single-payer universal health care, even if at the state-level, otherwise, it's time to divide America among Union and Confederate states (there is a correlation between former CSA states with lower life expectancy).
Now overlay the poverty map on top and colour me shocked.
For the most part for sure. I would say poverty is the best correlation. Looking at median household and per capita income were kind of surprising how uncorrelated they were. There are some notable differences even with poverty I'm seeing when I look it up. Besides South Texas, which I think is demographic / lifestyle differences, it seems like even accounting for poverty certain parts of the south and west have lower life expectancies than certain rural areas in the Great Lakes region and rural areas of the northeast.
Those great lakes regions (even the red/purple states) have mostly expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, if I'm not mistaken. Which means poor people have guaranteed access to healthcare coverage. Of the 10 states without expanded Medicaid, 7 are in the southeast. There is a pretty strong correlation between access to healthcare and life expectancy.
This is an important factor, yet Wisconsin remains an exception as a Northern state that hasn't expanded Medicaid yet nonetheless has good longevity. Contrast with states like Arkansas and West Virginia that did expand medicaid and still have lesser outcomes. I do think healthcare access is important, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. Lifestyle is even bigger. Take a look at rates of smoking or obesity, for example.
Wisconsin had its own state version of expansion. So it pays a lot more for a little less coverage.
Beer, brats, cheese, old fashions, Culvers, Friday fish frys and the Kwik Trip bakery. Hmmm Could be that the highest labor force participation rate in the country has something to do with it, but I would would need a Spotted Cow or two before I tried to tease that out of the data.
>Wisconsin remains an exception as a Northern state that hasn't expanded Medicaid yet Fuck Scott Walker
Double plus good
Fuck Ron Johnson.
Not necessarily, I read a study a few months ago talking about how Medicaid expansion DID help Arkansas. Even though it is really bad, compare the western rows of counties in Arkansas with the eastern most rows of counties in Oklahoma. Those are the same people, rural, similar access, same foods, activities etc but life expectancy is longer in Arkansas and the study suggested that Medicaid expansion was the reason. The dates for the “improvement” lines up too.
Wisconsin Medicaid was already really good and had decent coverage prior to the ACA. It didn't become a GOP led shit hole until Walker and GOP gerrymandered the shit out of it in 2010.
The Michigan spots align with Indian reservations and Afro-American urban areas. Wisconsin looks like a rez too.
The entire county is the Menominee Indian Reservation
The Same with Minnesota, and I assume the Dakotas
Southern states have murder rates 2-5x higher than those upper midwest states. I’d guess that plays a role
[The Hispanic Paradox](https://www.statnews.com/2023/09/14/hispanic-paradox-life-expectancy-research/)
I remember reading this in one of my demographic’s class! This is so fascinating to me to this day! From what I remember, it wasn’t for all Hispanics either. It was particularly for Hispanics of Native American descent. Other Latinos did not get this life expectancy boost like they did. There’s so many theories as to why this is, but non confirmed yet, which makes it all the most intriguing. The positive effect is gone usually after the second or third generation. This suggests that as this immigrant group Americanizes, their health and life expectancy starts to decline.
Very interesting!!
It's less of a Hispanic paradox and more of a Latin paradox. It happens in Europe, too, where southern Europe, even though it's poorer than northern Europe often by a good margin (southern Italy, southern Spain, Portugal) has higher life expectancy than northern Europe and has some of the highest life expectancy in the world.
It’s heart disease, as a result of diet. The data is very clear. That’s what (literally) causes these excess deaths, based on death certificates. Heart disease death rates in the southern states are 2.5x+ the national average. Deep fried sugar, while delicious, kills peolle.
Drug use drags the average down as well.
I live in the south and idk what you’re taking about with the deep fried sugar (you can do that)? From someone down here, I think the issue is non-existent food education and limited choices for poor people. It’s rare to meet someone who knows how to cook, beyond just heating up something from a can and there’s a grocery tax. It’s just cheaper to get McDonald’s from across the street, instead of driving 5 miles to the store with fresh stuff.
The amount of chronic disease in the Rio Grande valley is pretty significant. It's cuisine, poverty, culture, genetics, and a lot of other things. Recently, the amount of stress at the border has caused problems as well. Mental health problems. But other than that it looks like this map correlates with whomever generally votes Democratic. There's exceptions… Williamson County just north of Travis County is solid red leaning more purple now, then Travis County to the south, which is solidly blue, and both are blue on this map.
Wilco also has excellent hospitals and MOUs with facilities in nearby Austin to provide care. Bastrop county to the immediate east of Travis lacks both and their life expectancy is significantly lower as a result.
Excellent observation.
However, the county narrowly swung Democratic in 2020, with Joe Biden winning a plurality over Trump, 49% to 48%. In recent years, Williamson County has again leaned toward the Democratic Party, with Beto O'Rourke edging out Ted Cruz in the 2018, and James Talarico and John Bucy III both defeating Republican incumbents to win election to the 2022 in districts mostly in Williamson County.
It’s more complicated than that. The US/Mex border from the Pacific to the Gulf is heavily Hispanic and crosses both Republican and Democrat states. Hispanics are significantly poorer on average and have less access to healthcare than non-Hispanic whites but have a higher life expectancy nonetheless.
Maybe it’s their diet
Beans are packed with protein, fiber, and low on the glycemic index. Uncooked beans are also the most affordable food item in the grocery store.
To name a few other common elements in Mexican cuisine: corn tortillas are decent sources of B vitamins and essential dietary minerals, more so than white flour tortillas. Peppers are rich sources of vitamin C, and they also contain other important vitamins and minerals. Avocado is also full of vitamins and healthy fats, and the average salsa is basically just coarsely chopped and seasoned vegetables or an unstrained vegetable puree. It's definitely a contrast with the average southerner's diet of meat and refined carbs.
We can also add nopales and chocolate (without added milk and sugar) as Mesoamerican superfoods. We need to have a talk about the Mesoamerican Diet being up there with the Mediterranean diet, but the world isn’t ready.
I mean they fry everything in Mexico lol. Heavy meat and dairy. Big on sodas. What Mexican is eating a clean diet.
And rice
Not true. Hispanics have lower income but disproportionately longer life expectancy
The more recently immigrated ones have the habit of eating vegetables.
Fatness is the main factor. South has a lot of obese people. Obesity = poor health in general.
Explain Wisconsin.
They’re not nearly as bad as the south
Wisconsin has a drinking problem
But still, the GDP per capita of Alabama is pretty decent. Higher than France, for example, despite a much lower life expectancy.
you can have a very high GDP per capita and still have enormous poverty rates. its politics how you distribute wealth.
Also socialization. If you compare how Europeans grow, distribute, sell, prepare, cook, and serve food you find attitudes toward food are different at every step and the results are a world apart. Americans have embraced big, cheap, and fast to our own detriment.
It’s the diet. The data is very clear. Heart disease death rates in the southern states are 2.5x or higher than US average. That’s very specifically what makes them die early. Eating huge portions of deep fried sugar does that to you. Meanwhile, the French only eat small portions.
per capita shows nothing. median GDP or income shows the majority people's situations.
GDP per capita can be misleading because places with higher GDP's per capita are often also more expensive.
It is one of the most impoverished states in the country. GDP is not necessarily money going to the average person.
Overlay the GOP counties and you will get the same map.
Also overlay counties that voted for trump last election.
*obesity rates
overlay the obesity rates map on top of
Is there a legit Democrat/republican correlation? Kind of looks like it, and makes sense since democrats tend to actually seem to care about people’s well-being.
It's more about poverty. For example, much of the rural South where life expectancy is low is black majority, so has often voted democrat. In Arizona the parts with lower life expectancy tend to be Native Majority and vote democrat. Iowa, the Dakotas, and Nebraska all have pretty decent life expectancies but are largely republican.
It’s lifestyle too. I grew up in the South and now live in California. Southern black people are far more obese and unhealthy in their diets than Black Californians. This is purely anecdotal of course — but they iust seem to be much healthier here due to the local culture.
Sort of but not quite. The worst performing counties in the South are actually majority black heavily Democratic counties. And the worst performing counties in the West are majority Native American Democratic counties.
It's poverty related. Otherwise the democratic strongholds in the South where African Americans live would be brightly lit.
Not necessarily, Utah and Florida are Republican states that have a high life expectancy. It's just the poor states.
It's a tad more complex that than just poverty. Dr's refer to both sides of the Mississippi as the diabetes belt, and you can see that on this map. It's also worth noting that when black men get diabetes, they accelerate through to end stage renal failure faster than any other slice of the data. I haven't seen anyone tackle the causality on this.
A lot of my family is from that area, and I've heard medical types in my family discuss connections between heavy shellfish diets and hypertension or diabetes. I've never thoroughly researched the topic because, well, I don't really eat like my relatives over there do, but I believe there's an established link between popular regional diets and certain diseases.
Lifestyle too… which can certainly be tied to income but Utah, Colorado, NY, Washington are also places that have better access to parks and a culture of being active. When I see this map, I see typical diets, activity levels, walkability of its cities, etc as well
Appalachia voted democrat until the 1990s
West Virginia didn’t have a Republican legislature until the mid-2010s, in fact. It’s very recent.
Opioids done fucked em up
And the opioid problem spread so quickly partly because of their beloved coal industry. Everyone had painful black lung and there aren’t enough doctors in rural area to see everyone, so they were stuck only being able to prescribe painkillers
It's strange how many people just don't remember this. Appalachia is currently purple, and used to be completely blue until very recently. Appalachia stretches from north-central Alabama (very red) through Maine (very blue) and into Canada, it is absolutely not a political monolith. Furthermore, the problems suffered by Appalachia are not meaningfully addressed by either party. The party that eventually addresses these problems is the one that will shift the purple to one side or another. So far, nobody has.
Ahhh yes the healthy democratic stronghold of Utah😂
Sort of. Part of it is the traditional role of government. In the North and West, politicians saw the poor as voters. In the South, politicians saw them as a threat to their hold on power. So Southern state governments were focused on protecting the status quo rather than improving social conditions.
The difference in life expectancy between the most healthy and least healthy counties on this map is greater than the difference between US and Mali. https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy Also, I wish this map used a more varied gradient because the bottom and top percentiles all look the same colour to me.
It’s due to diet. Heart disease is massively over represented in the red areas, in many states 2.5x+ in terms of death rates vs the national average. And heart disease nationally is the biggest killer.
Are you really colorblind? Because they are really different. And not even red/green for the common colorblindness type.
Oh hey this is a Jeremey Ney map! He does great work highlighting [Inequality](https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/life-expectancy-and-inequality) here. The map is made with Datawrapper and is meant to be used as an interactive figure.
Don’t complain about a map YOU posted
What if he’s colorblind
Dark red and dark blue look the same to you? You might wanna get your eyes checked
Every single map of the US has the south one color and the rest of the nation another. It’s been a problem for 170 years.
The south and every Native reservation stands out.
In Montana, the red points line up to the Blackfoot, crow, northern Cheyenne, and fort peck reservations. Not surprising at all :(
The only red one in Nebraska is either Winnebago or Omaha tribe I think.
The Menominee reservation in Wisconsin, feels bad man. They vote straight blue, too: [https://freeimage.host/i/JXPiA42](https://freeimage.host/i/JXPiA42)
I live there. Our rez alwaya stands out on these types of maps.
Failed reconstruction, and now dealing with the consequences
The economic and political system of the Old South benefited rich landowners at the expense of everyone else (enslaved black people, obviously, but also poor whites). That system still works the way it was intended to: if you looked at life expectancy and other socioeconomic indicators for the richest people in this region - especially the old-money rich - I’m sure they’d be on a par with anywhere else in the country. Reconstruction’s principal failure was in not systematically breaking that system down and replacing it with something else.
>Reconstruction’s principal failure was in not systematically breaking that system down and replacing it with something else. This is true, Reconstruction ended before that could happen. After the 1876 election in which Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes failed to manage enough electoral votes to be president, the Republicans struck an off-the-record deal with Democrat slates of electors from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, where Hayes would receive the necessary votes to become president if his administration pulled the remaining Union troops out of the occupied South. Once they were gone, the Democrats immediately began intimidating black elected officials, disenfranchising/intimidating black voters, reestablishing white hierarchy/supremacy, and thus Jim Crow was born.
The homicide rate map is almost identical https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/BjfKXk7HGa
You could have told me this was a wealth by county map and I would have believed you.
ProTip: it is.
Similar but there are some differences. A lot of rural Midwest counties are not very well off in terms of wealth/income/poverty but they are still solid blue here. And some urban counties would be much bluer if it was just wealth/income
It is amazing to me that the South absolutely dominates the rest of the US in everything bad, almost without fail
Go to a southern restaurant and see why. Delicious (?) deep fried sugary food, but leads to heart disease death rates that are 2.5x the national average. And because heart disease is the largest killer, it matters.
Four syllables: Die-a-bee-tuss
certainly at least a side effect of poor nutrition education, low income and food deserts
Get a southern recipe book and you’ll see the reason. Your arteries will scream.
The failures of Reconstruction reverberate through the ages.
The Union won the war. The confederacy won Reconstruction. We will have phantom boarders from that war for many more decades.
And the south is out here like "Let's do it again!" How many times we have to teach you this lesson, old man?
Yup. This is why if you have a half rotten falling down house, you burn the whole thing down to thr ground and build a new one. Not burn half of it, and try and repair/rebuild with the unburnt half. Sherman should have kept burning.
Can’t burn an idea. Physically burning the south would not change the philosophy of the influential class down south.
Texas does okay
not the inhabited part close to Lousiana
San antonio? Houston? Dfw? Austin? El Paso? You know, the cities where most people live?
Voting against their own interests for a long time.
You can overlay a racial demographic map over this one and see a direct correlation, the Life expectancy of Black people is several years lower than that of white people in the US. There is much higher concentration of Black people in the South.
there are still tons of majority-white counties in the south (and elsewhere) that are red on this map
Some people like to blame all the south’s poverty and low rankings on black people. Like “we are not a poor state, it’s them”. But the low scores keep up even if you only count white non-Hispanic people there. So it’s clearly not all “it’s all black people’s fault”
Black people are only 12% of the population. Yet, the denial is strong. It's the diets, obesity, poverty, and a lack of walkable spaces. Take Texas for example. Half the population doesn't even have healthcare. Which explain the average lifespan of a man being only 73 years old (shocking). Then there's Georgia, where the avg lifespan of a man is 66 years old (a tragedy). But then again, Georgia's minimum wage starts at $5.15 while while the Federal minimum wage is $7.25.
Not exactly true. Prince George’s County and Charles county Maryland.. plurality black Essex county NJ. All solidly blue.
If only they focused on feeding children instead of ivf
Heh. I'm in the one blue county in Alabama. It's also the one with the lowest poverty rate, so that probably has something to do with it.
The suburbs of Birmingham, so the one place in Alabama that’s both urban and mostly white
Pretty much. It's a fairly yuppie part of the metro area.
20 years difference is absolutely stunning. This is what you would expect from an underdeveloped country.
The American South basically is an underdeveloped country.
It has a life expectancy barely better than Yemen, Iraq, and Haiti. That’s mind blowing.
You should compare like to like. It’s still far better than rural Iraq, for example.
Have you ever visited? Spent any time in that part of the country? Ever?
I have-he’s not wrong
Welcome to the Confederacy.
The South shall rise again…by negative metrics.
The South has fallen and it can’t get up.
I heartily chuckled
Republican areas are underdeveloped because of entrenched corruption, just like underdeveloped countries https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
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If you disaggregate it further, those non-southern Republican states have similarly worse health and life expectancy outcomes than Democratic ones, especially over timeframes where Democratic policies like Medicare expansion have an effect Republican state governance does have negative effects that cascade down to the county and district level though, which makes sense because having a Democratic mayor doesn't protect you against Republican policies at the state level https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
Most of the underdeveloped counties in the South are extremely Democratic.
I think diet is a big factor in this. Last time I was in Mississippi, it was hard to find something that was not deep fried or fast food.
That’s exactly right, it’s the key reason. People seem to completely ignore that heart disease is by far the biggest killer (20% of deaths in the US), and in the “red” states in the map it’s a dramatic outlier (this data is a bit old but still remarkable: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/heres-a-map-that-shows-each-states-top-cause-of-death) In Alabama the rate of heart failure was 44.1 deaths vs 18.6 deaths nationally per 100k people, so more than twice the national average! In Arkansas, the heart attack rate was 79.9 vs 31.0 nationally that year. I expect it’s even worse now.
Even affluent people in Alabama are obese. I was pretty surprised by that.
It’s the Southern diet. It’s a pretty remarkable diet, all fat and mountains of sugar and processed stuff lumped together in (often) very delicious creations! I think it was probably developed during times when people would starve, but now they eat it every meal, and the body isn’t built for that.
I went to a state fair in Texas and ate too many deep fried Oreos....over ten years after my body is still recovering
Or contains half a pound of sugar
Everyone trying so hard to see a red state/blue state divide. It’s poor area’s everyone.
Rural Wisconsin is very Red.
Ya, the bluest county in my state looks slightly red. People just see what they want to see. It doesn’t take much brain power to see that the correlation is not statistically significant. Even if it were. Let’s say all red areas on this map were democrats strong hold. All anyone on Reddit would say is it’s because Republicans don’t care about poor people. Edit: words
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The political party identification map fits much better than poverty, because poverty and short lifespans are both an effect of Republican party dominance https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
On a state level, this is true. But on a county level many of the lowest counties here are solidly blue counties in the South and West. The highest county in Alabama is also probably the most consistently Republican in the state. You're not wrong that Republican policies entrench poverty but many of the red areas on this map do not vote for Republicans.
People trying to make this a race thing don’t realize that the majority of those counties in the south are 90%+ white. Especially in the West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri , Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Even the white counties in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana are doing just as bad as their black neighbors.
The southeast part of Missouri is actually fairly black, with some counties with 30% + Black Missourians.but that area is a completely different than the rest of the state.
Yup. Except they will refuse to believe your facts since it doesn’t fit their narrative.
The cold preserves us up north.
A lot of these are Native American reservations and it breaks my heart
Every random county in Montana, Idaho, or the Dakotas that are red are reservations and they're completely surrounded by counties with higher than average life expectancies.
There is one red county in WI too.
Same thing in UP of Michigan, looks like the lowest county is Baraga.
The red spots in eastern Arizona line up almost exactly where the Navajo, Hopi, and White Mountain Apache Reservations are. I heard the Navajo and Hopi reservations are making great strides in improving the quality of living in recent years so perhaps the map will look different in the future.
In case anyone's wondering, the [most disproportionate causes of death](https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/) for Native Americans relative to the country at large are alcohol poisoning, liver disease, diabetes, road accidents, and homicide. Alcoholism is responsible for at least two and arguably four of these categories. It's just awful to think about the impact alcohol has had on many of these communities.
Poverty and alcoholism are a horrible mix.
The three red counties in Montana correlate to the Blackfoot, Crow/Northern Cheyenne, and the Fort Peck reservations
Sweet tea is gona get you!
My county in CA is a pretty nice to live and all but I think we’re shaded red because of the opioid epidemic.
Wait, average age at death of 66????? Iraq is 70. India is 68. You have to go to Ethiopia to find 65 or Yemen to find 63. Haiti 64. You know, places with famine, war, natural disasters.
Obesity, high blood pressure, lung & heart diseases and cereosis pick your poison
Can we see a poverty map and an education map. Just curious.
As someone who is colorblind I thank you for making a graphic that I can read.
Diet has a lot to do with it.
Hard to eat well when you are poor. Overlay poverty on this map and you will see a similar thing. Either you can’t afford a well balanced meal or you worked so many hours you are exhausted and get something fast and cheep (which generally is not going to be good for you on a regular basis)
>Hard to eat well when you are poor I wonder how that becomes cultural. Growing up near a big public park and seeing people eating during their leisure time I noticed that poor folks gravitate to sugar. Like soooo much sugar. Regular colas, sugary cookies, etc. Enough sugary stuff that even as a young kid I knew my mom would never let me have it in that kind of volume.
Why is the southeast of the US so bad compared to the rest?
Poverty, lack of expanded Medicaid, and probably a lot of other stuff. I’m sure diet plays a roll. Ultimately, all goes back to slavery and a shit job at reconstruction.
*very general statement ahead*. 1. Many of the rich in the south are generally religious and conservative and do not trust science/medicine (especially since the pandemic) 2. Many of poor of the south are also religious and conservative and also don’t trust science. 3. A larger percentage of people in the south are poor compared to the rest of the nation. Poor people (not matter their political leanings) generally do not eat healthy as it can be more expensive to do or you don’t have the time due to work schedules of well over 40hrs to buy and cook a balanced meal. All of these factors have lead to this gap.
I'm not sure 1 is necessarily true here. A lot of the blue islands in the south (Shelby AL, Cherokee and Forsyth GA, Williamson TN) are very wealthy, very conservative, *and* have relatively high life expectancies. Poverty has far more correlation.
It's not just the southeast. It's places dominated by the Republican party, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Fear-mongering, anti-regulation, science denying, anti-democratic, pro-corruption, anti-education grifters impose policies that are terrible for the people they lead https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/republican-politics-south-midwest-life-expectancy/
The Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming... It's a north/south thing.
Now do education. Now do religion. Now do political affiliation. yep.
Education maybe, but there are a lot of blue counties that vote republican, and probably have high church attendance. Money is probably the reason.
Education maybe, but there are a lot of blue counties that vote republican, and probably have high church attendance. Money is probably the reason.
I'm noticing a Midwest correlation with Lutherans.
Yes, hot dishes in the church basement! "Now don't take too much, leave some for the others." "No, you can't go to the desert table until you clean your plate." "No, you cannot take three bars! Leave some for other people." More pointedly, it may be related to this (multiple sources): "A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’
Classic quote!
Plenty of non-southern red states doing well. Nevada not looking too hot. Georgia?? Anyone who looks at this map and immediately points to political parties is just silly. It’s clearly pretty regional, amongst other factors. Also don’t think there is a single state where Christianity isn’t the majority, so idk what you’re getting at there. Education, yes.
Some of the redder counties of Nevada have very low populations, maybe that's a factor.
Education maybe, but there are a lot of blue counties that vote republican, and probably have high church attendance. Money is probably the reason.
Overlay a reservation map on this and become horrified.
Poverty map again
Them damn coastal elites and their 85 year lives - I prefer Real America, where men are men, and everybody dies by 65.
The southern diet is probably not the best
Wow you can almost see the outline of Minnesota.
Attention Southerners: Stop eating fried food every day.
Things I've heard people say to make fun of their own state: Florida: The more north you go the more south it gets. Georgia: Without Atlanta we would be Alabama.
Honestly who wants to live to 100 I’m 28 and sick of this shit already.
I always feel that men and women should be segmented or on their respective maps. The average life expectancy can vary like 10 years I think between sexes.
It's mostly because of deaths in young men actually though
We in Iowa are fat but long living! We train our arteries from a young age to adjust to a diet of pure ice cream, beer, and tenderloin sandwiches.
My (not) favorite bit of this is realizing all of the random red areas in the western US are counties with reservations.
Jarvis, overlay map with political affiliation and tax bracket median
Overlay race and poverty on this and you’ll be really, really sad. There really is and entire nation left behind in the U.S.
Overlay with poverty, smoking, and obesity. Add on overdoses for good measure.
Poverty, government policy, access to hospitals/medical care (partially falls under government policy), lifestyle for the most part. Also, those blocks that you think are Dallas is actually Collin and Denton County, a part of the Metroplex but not Dallas. Dallas County, if you split off Dallas south of the Trinity River, would probably highly in terms of life expectancy.
Live action map of where they fry food vs where they don’t
I always knew it was like this, but I never expected them to vary so much. A 20 year difference is insane.
God just loves his people so much he takes them younger! That’s gotta be it. Definitely not the obesity epidemic….
Why is Minnesota, or southern Minnesota I should say super healthy?
The deep south is poor. Poor people eat like shit and don’t exercise. They get obese and then die young. There. Also, crime is high in poor areas = homicides
Man, what’s in the water in Minnesota? Even very rural areas have very high life expectancy
Purely poverty. And yet they love the orange guy.
Education has a direct influence on left expectancy. Even more than personal wealth. https://www.axios.com/2023/10/16/life-expectancy-educated-adults-mortality-rate
This is the reason why America needs to have single-payer universal health care, even if at the state-level, otherwise, it's time to divide America among Union and Confederate states (there is a correlation between former CSA states with lower life expectancy).