5 ms·

Not only county-to-county. My friend did his PhD dissertation on how (at least in Rochester, NY), life expectancy varies by decades between zip codes. His res

Not only county-to-county. My friend did his PhD dissertation on how (at least in Rochester, NY), life expectancy varies by decades between zip codes. His research focused on urban Food Deserts and studied how the lack of access to healthy food nearby restricted diets to that available in convenience stores (chips, soda, etc). I wish I had access to his dissertation, but he just defended a month ago and cannot find it in any publications right now. EDIT: Not my friend's paper, but here is a similar study: https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/publications/biblio/8355 https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/publications/biblio/8355

willvarfar 9y ago
Please try and get it on HN when its available.
jameshart 9y ago
This story was shared on HN recently and suggests that even stronger correlations might be better found by looking at different boundaries than zipcodes: https://theconversation.com/how-zip-codes-nearly-masked-the-lead-problem-in-flint-65626 https://theconversation.com/how-zip-codes-nearly-masked-the-...
- binarymax 9y ago
  Fascinating, thanks for sharing. The points made in the article seem obvious, but doesn't offer much in terms of a suggested solution (conscientiously redraw zip codes). Do you know of any effort to have a more accurate "health boundary" region designation?
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    The optimal solution is likely a huge set of overlapping boundaries each accounting for different things. Like if easy access to fresh groceries matters, the boundaries for that will not line up with the water system boundary (there could be some interesting correlations between the areas, but a good analysis would have to split out the boundaries to account for each effect).
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    A major problem in any demographics research is data coding. For health-related demographics, HIPPA starts playing in. Because mailing address is almost always provided in a healthcare setting, ZIP Code data are present in records. Similarly for coronor or death reports. Other alternatives, say, census block number, exist, but would have to be coded into the data. If you're already working with ZIP rollup data, you simply cannot recode for finer-grained analysis. The most obvious data target would be the ZIP+4 encoding, though here in a provider context you'd likely run into HIPPA concerns (I've not worked in the field for some years). For death reports, that's obviated, so access to county death records at household detail would be an option, but you'd need to acquire data across all (or some sampling of) the 3,144 counties in the US. Some of that data may be available in electronic form, but I'd suspect some level of fieldwork might still be required.
nostromo 9y ago
> His research focused on urban Food Deserts and studied how the lack of access to healthy food nearby restricted diets to that available in convenience stores (chips, soda, etc). I hear this often but always wonder which way the causation arrow flows. Do "food deserts" cause unhealthy eating? Or do groups of consumers that prefer unhealthy eating create "food deserts" with their purchasing decisions?
- jressey 9y ago
  This is not a scientific answer, but my perspective is that healthy food is more expensive, therefore purveyors of healthy food tend to avoid poor areas. It's not so much the consumer's "choice" to buy these products, but their inability to purchase or lack of knowledge that fresh foods may extend their lives. Edit: Another issue affecting these consumers is that they may not have as much time to cook as a family with 2 parents working 1 job each.
  - dpc59 9y ago
    Healthy food isn't very expensive if you're smart about it (it requires a bit of education and understanding nutrition). I live off of rice, beans, spinach, pita bread, whole grain pasta, peanut butter and the cheapest veggies I can find. I spend about 20$CAD a week on groceries.
    - Jach 9y ago
      Where's the steak? =) The day someone defines what "healthy food" actually is, or what subsets of food will suffice, will be the day people realize it can be had for as much or less than the unhealthy options.
      - jressey 9y ago
        Generally, I think most people would agree that "healthy food" is a diverse set of foods that do not contain empty calories.
chubot 9y ago
Hm that is really interesting. I can definitely believe that effect. I've bought groceries from the same few places for 7 years or more. It seems obvious that people buy food 90% of the time from the 5-10 places closest to them geographically. I live in a good area and they have good food. But if my choices were all cheap soda and snacks like I see in other places, I imagine that would have a very concrete effect on my health. A few extra calories or a few more food adulterants every meal, every day, for 7 years or 20 years really adds up. It seems extremely unlikely that there's no consequence of the food choices of your nearby grocery, so I'm glad that someone is measuring that effect.
- bluedino 9y ago
  It's not the store, it's the shopper. The city I live in is supposedly a food desert but there are 6 grocery stores in the zip code that supposedly has none. They are huge chains like Kroger but they have everything you could imagine. But even when I'm at Kroger or Meijer, people have carts full of frozen food, sugary drinks and snacks, etc. No fresh produce, no staples, etc.
oconnor663 9y ago
The food desert theory is controversial, no? One random source I googled just now: http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of-the-food-desert http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of...
jliptzin 9y ago
I have heard one time that life expectancy sometimes varies by decades even between households!
sxates 9y ago
I met someone working for the city of Oakland who was researching similar things here. She pointed out that life expectancy in the 'flats' of Oakland was 7 years lower than in the 'hills' of Oakland. That geographical boundary mostly separates the wealthy from the poor (though areas of the 'flats' are rapidly gentrifying). There are also other factors, such as proximity to pollution from highways and the ports, crime rates, etc.
derefr 9y ago
I would imagine that it's not just convenience stores. I frequently ponder the fact that the grocery store closest to me is a marque of a US conglomerate (I live in Canada) that manages to have "low prices" by just treating Canadian stores as part of its US logistics chain—almost all of its products are shipped here from the US, rather than locally produced under US brands. And that includes things like baked goods and produce. Thus, everything perishable in that store is either much "older" than you'd expect (i.e. it will go bad very soon after you buy it), or is pounded with preservatives—the bread, bagels, muffins, etc. all sort of have this uniquely-bad "springy yet doughy" texture: the sort of texture that I associate with Wonderbread. Within the same distance there are local bakeries, produce markets, butcher shops, etc. that sell good stuff. But I don't doubt for a moment that certain families ignore those and go straight for the "everything shipped from far away" supermarket for all their shopping—and are having different health outcomes because of that.
- ghaff 9y ago
  >local bakeries, produce markets, butcher shops, etc. That's probably where I would go to shop. Waiting for my local farm stand to open for the summer. And there's a nice local butcher down the road. But these are not cheap alternatives to my local grocery store (which actually has fairly decent produce, meat, bread from in-house bakery, etc.) I enjoy going to farmers' markets but they're not cheap places to buy food for the most part.
hammock 9y ago
>Not only county-to-county. My friend did his PhD dissertation on how (at least in Rochester, NY), life expectancy varies by decades between zip codes. Amazing. Perhaps life expectancy even varies between households or...dare I say it...individual people?

willvarfar 9y ago

Please try and get it on HN when its available.

jameshart 9y ago

This story was shared on HN recently and suggests that even stronger correlations might be better found by looking at different boundaries than zipcodes: https://theconversation.com/how-zip-codes-nearly-masked-the-lead-problem-in-flint-65626 https://theconversation.com/how-zip-codes-nearly-masked-the-...

binarymax 9y ago
Fascinating, thanks for sharing. The points made in the article seem obvious, but doesn't offer much in terms of a suggested solution (conscientiously redraw zip codes). Do you know of any effort to have a more accurate "health boundary" region designation?
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The optimal solution is likely a huge set of overlapping boundaries each accounting for different things. Like if easy access to fresh groceries matters, the boundaries for that will not line up with the water system boundary (there could be some interesting correlations between the areas, but a good analysis would have to split out the boundaries to account for each effect).
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  A major problem in any demographics research is data coding. For health-related demographics, HIPPA starts playing in. Because mailing address is almost always provided in a healthcare setting, ZIP Code data are present in records. Similarly for coronor or death reports. Other alternatives, say, census block number, exist, but would have to be coded into the data. If you're already working with ZIP rollup data, you simply cannot recode for finer-grained analysis. The most obvious data target would be the ZIP+4 encoding, though here in a provider context you'd likely run into HIPPA concerns (I've not worked in the field for some years). For death reports, that's obviated, so access to county death records at household detail would be an option, but you'd need to acquire data across all (or some sampling of) the 3,144 counties in the US. Some of that data may be available in electronic form, but I'd suspect some level of fieldwork might still be required.

nostromo 9y ago

> His research focused on urban Food Deserts and studied how the lack of access to healthy food nearby restricted diets to that available in convenience stores (chips, soda, etc). I hear this often but always wonder which way the causation arrow flows. Do "food deserts" cause unhealthy eating? Or do groups of consumers that prefer unhealthy eating create "food deserts" with their purchasing decisions?

jressey 9y ago
This is not a scientific answer, but my perspective is that healthy food is more expensive, therefore purveyors of healthy food tend to avoid poor areas. It's not so much the consumer's "choice" to buy these products, but their inability to purchase or lack of knowledge that fresh foods may extend their lives. Edit: Another issue affecting these consumers is that they may not have as much time to cook as a family with 2 parents working 1 job each.
- dpc59 9y ago
  Healthy food isn't very expensive if you're smart about it (it requires a bit of education and understanding nutrition). I live off of rice, beans, spinach, pita bread, whole grain pasta, peanut butter and the cheapest veggies I can find. I spend about 20$CAD a week on groceries.
  - Jach 9y ago
    Where's the steak? =) The day someone defines what "healthy food" actually is, or what subsets of food will suffice, will be the day people realize it can be had for as much or less than the unhealthy options.
    - jressey 9y ago
      Generally, I think most people would agree that "healthy food" is a diverse set of foods that do not contain empty calories.

chubot 9y ago

Hm that is really interesting. I can definitely believe that effect. I've bought groceries from the same few places for 7 years or more. It seems obvious that people buy food 90% of the time from the 5-10 places closest to them geographically. I live in a good area and they have good food. But if my choices were all cheap soda and snacks like I see in other places, I imagine that would have a very concrete effect on my health. A few extra calories or a few more food adulterants every meal, every day, for 7 years or 20 years really adds up. It seems extremely unlikely that there's no consequence of the food choices of your nearby grocery, so I'm glad that someone is measuring that effect.

bluedino 9y ago
It's not the store, it's the shopper. The city I live in is supposedly a food desert but there are 6 grocery stores in the zip code that supposedly has none. They are huge chains like Kroger but they have everything you could imagine. But even when I'm at Kroger or Meijer, people have carts full of frozen food, sugary drinks and snacks, etc. No fresh produce, no staples, etc.

oconnor663 9y ago

The food desert theory is controversial, no? One random source I googled just now: http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of-the-food-desert http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of...

jliptzin 9y ago

I have heard one time that life expectancy sometimes varies by decades even between households!

sxates 9y ago

I met someone working for the city of Oakland who was researching similar things here. She pointed out that life expectancy in the 'flats' of Oakland was 7 years lower than in the 'hills' of Oakland. That geographical boundary mostly separates the wealthy from the poor (though areas of the 'flats' are rapidly gentrifying). There are also other factors, such as proximity to pollution from highways and the ports, crime rates, etc.

derefr 9y ago

I would imagine that it's not just convenience stores. I frequently ponder the fact that the grocery store closest to me is a marque of a US conglomerate (I live in Canada) that manages to have "low prices" by just treating Canadian stores as part of its US logistics chain—almost all of its products are shipped here from the US, rather than locally produced under US brands. And that includes things like baked goods and produce. Thus, everything perishable in that store is either much "older" than you'd expect (i.e. it will go bad very soon after you buy it), or is pounded with preservatives—the bread, bagels, muffins, etc. all sort of have this uniquely-bad "springy yet doughy" texture: the sort of texture that I associate with Wonderbread. Within the same distance there are local bakeries, produce markets, butcher shops, etc. that sell good stuff. But I don't doubt for a moment that certain families ignore those and go straight for the "everything shipped from far away" supermarket for all their shopping—and are having different health outcomes because of that.

ghaff 9y ago
>local bakeries, produce markets, butcher shops, etc. That's probably where I would go to shop. Waiting for my local farm stand to open for the summer. And there's a nice local butcher down the road. But these are not cheap alternatives to my local grocery store (which actually has fairly decent produce, meat, bread from in-house bakery, etc.) I enjoy going to farmers' markets but they're not cheap places to buy food for the most part.

hammock 9y ago

>Not only county-to-county. My friend did his PhD dissertation on how (at least in Rochester, NY), life expectancy varies by decades between zip codes. Amazing. Perhaps life expectancy even varies between households or...dare I say it...individual people?