American Lifespan By County

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2012/05/03/american-lifespan-by-county/

by astrieanna • 14 years ago

63 86 14 years ago

antr• 14 years ago

just proves that having the most expensive (per capita) healthcare system in the globe does not really contribute to health(y) results

corin_6• 14 years ago

I don't think I've ever met anybody who thought America's health care system was better than that of many/most Europea countries - certainly not of any fellow English/Europeans I know, but also no Americans I know and have discussed it with.

arethuza2• 14 years ago

I guess it depends what you mean by "best" - if the ability to pay is not a factor (i.e. you are very wealthy) then I suspect the absolute best care is probably available in the US.

However, in the UK we went for the option of having pretty good, but perhaps not the absolute best, available to everyone, free at the point of delivery, regardless of wealth. With the option to pay for private care if you want it - either in the UK or abroad. Personally, I think this is a pretty good compromise.

rollypolly• 14 years ago

I sometimes wonder if the high cost of healthcare is not, in part, a conspiracy from larger companies to keep people from taking jobs at startups.

Edit: (To my many silent downvoters..) Healthcare being tied to your employer is a competitive advantage of larger companies, isn't it? Either way, speak up!

thejteam2• 14 years ago

So I would have to ask the question, "Why don't startups provide group health insurance?" If you want good employees, pay for them.

In most states, if you have 2 employees you are eligible for a group plan. In a few states even a single founder is eligible.

You aren't just computing with large companies either. At my last job I worked for a small business. Less than 25 employees. We had group health insurance. Talk to an insurance agent. It is not as hard as it seems and if you go with a high deductible plan, it is not as expensive as it seems either.

caf• 14 years ago

It's interesting the places where there's a large apparent change across a border - for example North Dakota / Montana.

gyardley• 14 years ago

Likely the border of an Indian reservation.

fierarul• 14 years ago

What the article doesn't seem to link is this: http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali... , a nice visualisation.

Someone• 14 years ago

"In Collier, Florida, women live 85.8 years on average. In McDowell, West Virginia, they live to be 74.1. That’s an 11.7-year gap"

I would guess most of that difference is due to migration of elderly persons to Florida, not due to Florida being healthier or health care being better there.

dredmorbius3• 14 years ago

Moving somewhere when you're old doesn't change your life expectancy.

You're confusing something else, possibly average age, with life expectancy.

If the elderly populations of long-lived Florida counties still largely come from migration, longevity may say much more about living and healthcare conditions elsewhere. As well as wealth effects reflected by the ability to retire to Florida.

aes256• 14 years ago

> Moving somewhere when you're old doesn't change your life expectancy.

It may increase the average life expectancy of the area you are moving to, though.

In other words, while the people who were born and raised in the area may have a low life expectancy, an influx of wealthy retirees will drag up the average life expectancy. In some cases the people moving to these areas may already be older than the average life expectancy.

cdeonier• 14 years ago

Probably helpful to realize that the lifespan is determined more than just one metric, such as healthcare. Cultural differences between different regions likely plays a significant effect. For instance, my guess is diet leading to obesity helps to drag down life expectancy in the regions where the life expectancy is lower:

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jp...

yummyfajitas2• 14 years ago

Not just cultural differences. Things like car accidents and murders also play a disproportionate role.

If nation A has 60 people living to 79, and nation B has 59 people living to 80 and 1 person being murdered at 20, A and B have the same mean life expectancy (of 79).

Though I suppose you could call things like murders and road safety "cultural".

jonmc12• 14 years ago

Exactly, this is likely the most meaningful statistical correlation. Here is a map by county: http://www.americanobesity.org/obesityInAmerica.htm

Obesity has been found to take 10yrs off lifespan.

Also, smoking: http://labs.slate.com/articles/cigarette-map/ (click tab to see by county).

OllieJones• 14 years ago

Tobias wrapped up this fine post writing, the "gap [between developed and underdeveloped counties] will be, if it continues, a major fissure in a future America."

WILL be? It already is. It's pretty much in line with the so-called red / blue divide in the nation.

cageface• 14 years ago

I've been living abroad for well over a year now. I always have to explain when I get the inevitable questions from people baffled by the inanity of our politics that the U.S. is really like two different countries stuffed inside one border.

dredmorbius3• 14 years ago

s/two/fifty/

There's a reason it's referred to as the united states.

In most of the world, "state" == nation. The US is an exception, but it's because the initial concept, pre-pivot, was of a confederated union of independent states.

_delirium3• 14 years ago

This appears to be a reblog with a low-res version. The full interactive maps (in different forms) are the first three entries here: http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...

Iv6• 14 years ago

I am sorry, I don't buy the "we are like several countries, you can't compare us to a single one !" argument. Japan is at 40% of USA population and its average life expectancy is on par with the highest county you can find in USA while their GDP per capita (PPP) is only 70% of the one in USA.

That shows a very inefficient use of USA's wealth and a very poor healthcare policy.

US states may be very different from each other, but their difference is far less that the ones between European states. You speak a single language, you have a single president, a federal senate, a federal army, a federal police, a powerful federal intelligence agency, and many institutions at the federal level. You have 200 years of common history as a single country, if we except the Secession period. Actually, I could understand that you could say that US is an union of two countries because of this episode, but a union of 50, no way.

Europe on the other hand is a territory that is divided in several countries with different languages, different religions, different history, several wars between them (the list is really really long). Being generous, you could say that we began a common history 50 years ago, but this was in fact only an economic union on a small set of goods (steel and coal IIRC) between 5 countries.

Apple to oranges, really.

rmc3• 14 years ago

Europe has had a common history for thousands of years. Constantly forming, splitting and reforming. The Hellenistic Greeks were all over the Mediterranean, the Roman empire was all over the place, these England was a subsidiary of the kingdom of France, then not, then Ireland of England. Netherlands was part of Spain, Belgium was part of France. Lots of western Poland was in Germany, Austria was part of Germany, Nice (now in France) was part of Italy.

We're one big family who've been all over each other for thousands of years.

jeltz2• 14 years ago

Technically Nice was never a part of Italy. Nice was most of the time part of the Duchy of Savoy (later called the Kingdom of Sardinia when the Duke of Savoy also became the king of Sardinia). Nice became French in 1860 while Italy was formed in 1861.

What used to be the Duchy of Savoy is now split between Italy and France.

EDIT: A map of Savoy in the 16th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Savoy2.png

ExpiredLink• 14 years ago

Austria was part of Germany only between 1938 and 1945. 7 out of ~1000 years of existence.

icegreentea• 14 years ago

His argument doesn't really hinge on states. He's arguing that the there's a hilarious geographical disparity going on, in that big bits of rural backwater America is nothing like the America people like to believe in.

It's like how if you took Canada, with our pretty good (I like to think so) health care and general infrastructure, and more or less respectable indicators of health and safety.... and then decided to just look at our reserves. Huge WTF.

Natives are 1/30th of the Canadian population (so significant, but not huge), and their average life expectancy is ~10 years less than the national average. How does this happen?

Situations like this shows that it IS important to consider internal divisions like this. If the native population in Canada happened to be doubled or something, then you would run in all sorts of problems trying to improve out overall health care without addressing specific issues regarding why the native population appears to have such poor outcomes.

JoeAltmaier6• 14 years ago

Population density may explain the whole fabricated issue. Where medical care is hours away and expensive to reach, life expectancy drops. Surprise.

Also low-density population means smaller sample sizes thus larger error. Again, surprise.

padobson4• 14 years ago

You have a single president, a federal senate, a federal army, a federal police, a powerful federal intelligence agency, and many institutions at the federal level.

This one sentence does an excellent job of summing up our failures as a nation over the last 236 years. One, gargantuan government can never hope to meet the vastly different needs of 300 million people living in highly diverse geographies, population densities, and climates.

So while the US should be treated like one country for all those reasons, those reasons should also be blamed for most of her failures.

JoeAltmaier6• 14 years ago

I vote for school board, county supervisor, state governor, representative and two senators.

One monolithic government is a myth. It could even be argued that the fractured nature of US govt is responsible for wide variation is schools, infrastructure, moral laws etc.

its_so_on• 14 years ago

Okay, so now you have something to blame. Is that as far as you wanted to go, or did you want to also remove these things? Genuine question.

rayiner• 14 years ago

[citation needed]

Nrsolis• 14 years ago

Well I've lived here all of my life and in many different parts of the US. I've also lived for short periods abroad.

Let me address your points one by one:

1. Comparing us to Japan is really a poor choice. Japan is a highly uniform society and very xenophobic. They have an almost uniform cultural, religious, and genetic makeup.

2. We don't have a single language, a single president, a federal police, or any of the other things you are mentioning in the same manner of which you think of them in your country. The authority of those particular institutions is VERY limited in some very crucial ways. We are more like a strong union of 50 separate states, each with its own government (and president, called a governor here) with its own particular political challenges. There have been SEVERAL fights between the state and federal government over things like national policy and states rights that run counter to your argument. For example, Arizona is fighting with the federal government over immigration enforcement. California is fighting with the federal government over marijuana. Nevada fights with the federal government over online gambling. etc etc etc. During the civil rights era, some southern states mounted what almost became an armed rebellion against the federal government.

We also dont have a single language. LARGE parts of this country speak ONLY Spanish, or ONLY Haitian, or ONLY Russian. There is no requirement for someone living here to speak English and it's been a HUGE problem politically in places like California, Texas, and Florida. In California and Washington State, there are large Chinese and Japanese populations that only speak their mother tongue.

Furthermore, the country itself is changing constantly. Dearborn, Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Muslims in the USA, and that is having an interesting effect on the political and social dynamic of what was once a very very white/european part of the country.

It's easy here to understand how we can identify a Southerner or a Californian by their manner, diet, and dialect. I feel like the rest of the world is often confused by the idea that the USA acts and thinks alike as a uniform country. We're not.

jeltz2• 14 years ago

The same applies to almost any large country. Outsiders tend to think that every country has a single culture, single language, etc. (I am from Sweden so for us that assumption is basically true.)

Examples where it is not true: Russia, India, China, Germany, Spain, Italy.

Iv6• 14 years ago

> Japan is a highly uniform society and very xenophobic. They have an almost uniform cultural, religious, and genetic makeup.

I'm French, my wife is Japanese. We have experience of both immigration procedure. Let me tell you that Japan's xenophobism is a myth that dates from WWII. France is far more tough for foreigners.

It is true that they are basically more uniform culturally and probably genetically and religiously than US. But you missed an important point : I did not compare US's healthcare to Japan's. I compared US' best county to Japan's average. That makes the uniformity of the country quite irrelevant, don't you think ?

2. You exaggerate the differences. 96% of Americans speak English. 87% as their primary language. Of course institutions are limited ! That's how it works in a democracy ! I agree that states are different, have some freedom (but probably not much more than a German Land or a Swiss canton, these are federal countries too) but my point is that stating that these differences are as big as the ones between EU countries is ridiculous.

anamax6• 14 years ago

> That shows a very inefficient use of USA's wealth and a very poor healthcare policy.

Actually it doesn't.

Suppose we compare the lifespans of Japanese-Americans to Japanese in Japan. Your theory predicts that Japanese-Americans will have a shorter-lifespan. Reality says otherwise.

The populations are different. The US is incredibly diverse, and much of that diversity is correlated with geography. Japan, not so much.

lebski88• 14 years ago

Are you saying that it's genetic or that it's cultural (e.g. food, exercise and lifestyle choices)?

I think in America you also have to account for socio-economic status more than in other first world countries. Also where do Japanese-Americans tend to live? I find it hard to imagine that immigration is as high in the poorest regions.

anamax6• 14 years ago

> Actually, I could understand that you could say that US is an union of two countries because of this episode, but a union of 50, no way.

How many, and which, states have you lived in?

Heck - if you live in CA, how much time have you spent outside LA/SF Bay area? The central valley (where I grew up) is very different, as are the sierra folk.

And no, ski trips or summers at Tahoe don't count.

_delirium3• 14 years ago

I've lived in a few, and I agree that, say, the central valley and LA/SF are very different. But I think SF and Boston, say, share a lot in common, enough to be roughly the same country, at least in the way that Paris and Bordeaux, or Oslo and Bergen are the same country (some cultural differences, but not completely foreign). So I would guess there are fewer than 50 really distinct social groups in the U.S.--- several urban social groups, several small-town groups, several rural ones, maybe 5-8 total.

maratd• 14 years ago

> That shows a very inefficient use of USA's wealth and a very poor healthcare policy.

The greatest factor in longevity is genetics, not wealth expenditure. Ever consider that the average genetic makeup of someone in Japan may be quite different from the average in the US?

Now, compare those of Japanese ancestry living in the US with those in Japan and I might be interested in your theories.

laaph2• 14 years ago

The greatest factor for longevity in an individual is genetics. For a population not so much.

Lots of people say if you remove the US, the greatest correlation (not causation and all that, yes yes) to longevity is health care spending. Picking the first result off google, here: http://andrewgelman.com/2009/12/healthcare_spen/

Japan is a clear outlier but so is the US.

Iv6• 14 years ago

Cultural habits are probably the dominant factor. The extension of longevity these last years is mainly due to people stopping smoking.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110207112539.ht...

Don't smoke, drink coffee moderately, have low cholesterol, and be wealthy.

bane7• 14 years ago

"You have 200 years of common history as a single country..."

That's actually not true...even remotely. California and Texas for example have been part of at least three different countries. Texas for example has had six different national owners, including a stint as an independent country. Alaska wasn't a state in the U.S. till 1959!

Something like half of the land territory of the U.S. was added in the 20th century. And territories like Virginia have around 400 years of history, only half of which is with the U.S.

Oklahoma (a non-European word) held out till 1907 and has at least 25 Native tongues and presently is home to 39 recognized nations protected by treaty!

tome• 14 years ago

I love heat maps like this: they pack crucial information in an easily accessible format. However, they should always be scaled for population density, otherwise it's very misleading. Does the huge swathe of green in Alaska counterbalance the few red spots in Florida? Probably not!

drats• 14 years ago

The poor results on the map line up a fair bit with the cotton industry lines of the 19th century in this article http://bigthink.com/ideas/21383

Industry (dots) lined up with Obama voters from the article: http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsov...

monkeypizza2• 14 years ago

Imagine if you live in a university town, but it just gets redistricted to include a neighboring industrial town. The life expectancy of your town just dropped, drastically.

But does that change your life at all? No, your life is exactly the same as before.

Same with these stats. Just because people who have lower life expectancies move or happen to live near you, it doesn't change anything about your life.

If canada and the US merged, the average life expectancy of the new country would go up, but that number itself wouldn't change anyone's life.

It's the same with arbitrary county groupings. If you live in a county with lots of poor people, they will have a lower life expectancy. That doesn't mean anything about you, though. If the border was different, you might live in a county with lots of rich people.

monkeypizza2• 14 years ago

life expectancy at 80 is probably 5 years or so. So having a bunch of 80 year olds move to your county will probably increase it. Similarly, having successful, rich and long-lived people move out of your country at age 80, a few years before dying, will mean they don't increase your country life expectancy at all, despite the fact that they lived there for 80 years.

JoeAltmaier6• 14 years ago

Not a lot of 80-yr-olds moving to the country, at least in Iowa. Mostly when folks get older, they move into the city with family or an apt or home.

zwieback• 14 years ago

It would be interesting to see the spread in life expectancy in Canada or Armenia. It's easy to shorten your life, even in a rich country but not so easy to extend it so I would expect increasing asymmetry as you go up. These comparisons should be done with distributions.

mmaunder• 14 years ago

I think this is what you're after:

http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...

bane7• 14 years ago

I remember one year, while out skiing in West Virginia, my wife fell and broke her arm. The ambulance ride to the nearest hospital was about 1.5 hrs through some of the poorest and most ramshackle areas I've seen outside of the middle east and it ended at one of the smallest hospitals I've ever seen in the U.S. She received good care, but I can see many health choices being made in rural areas because

a) Too poor

b) Too far

If a resident of that area can even get their hands on a car, a 3-4 hour round trip to visit the medical center (not counting time at the center) vs. putting in another day on the job would certainly give me pause.

American Lifespan By County

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