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> Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up. Yes, but people are making their decision based on out-of-date
by ef4 10y ago
> Suburbia exists because people want a quiet, relatively safe place for their kids to grow up.
Yes, but people are making their decision based on out-of-date facts. Because in the United States in 2016, mortality risk goes down as population density goes up, and city kids are statistically safer.
The #1 killer of children in US is car accidents. Guess who gets in dramatically less car accidents? City kids who don't need to ride in cars so much.
The #2 killer of children in the US is guns, and child gun deaths are higher outside the cities, on average. People often don't believe this, but it should be obvious when you pause and consider where American gun culture is centered. It's not in the big cities.
Suicide and substance abuse rates are also lower in the cities. This may be caused by the many small towns with major meth and opioid epidemics pulling down the statistics.
(All of this depends on comparing apples-to-apples: being poor makes a bigger difference than the urban vs rural split, so you need to consider people at the same socioeconomic level.)
- brightball 10y agoUmmm...guns are nowhere near the #2 killer of children in the US. Where did you even find get a stat like that? I'm looking and can't find anything that even resembles it anywhere. Here are the top 3 by age group: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001915.htm https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001915.htm
- ef4 10y agoI should have qualified with "#2 cause of accidental death." And as your link shows, "accidental death" is the #1 overall cause of death for children. So it's the #2 category of the #1 category of risk.
- brightball 10y agoCould you point me to that? I still can't find it.
- ef4 10y agohttp://www.medpagetoday.com/upload/2013/7/24/FA-5548.pdf http://www.medpagetoday.com/upload/2013/7/24/FA-5548.pdf "Safety in Numbers: Are Major Cities the Safest Places in the United States?" by Myers et al, Annals of Emergency Medicine
- brightball 10y agoThe statistic measured is "injury death rate" which explains the qualifier a little bit better and makes perfect sense. That's a fairly narrow field. If a physical injury is to lead to death, having somebody else around to find you and provide aid / get you to a hospital is going to be less likely the more spread out people are.