From the article itself: "...this study found that socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors alone explained 60% of the variation in life expectancy. At the sam

From the article itself: "...this study found that socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors alone explained 60% of the variation in life expectancy. At the same time, 74% of the variation was explained by behavioral and metabolic risk factors alone, while only marginally more variation was explained by socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors, behavioral and metabolic risk factors, and health care factors combined. Furthermore, there was very little additional effect of socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors when accounting for all 3 sets of factors simultaneously, suggesting that the association between life expectancy and socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors at the county level is largely mediated through behavioral and metabolic risk factors." Maybe I'm misunderstanding how they are controlling here, but don't race, income, socioeconomic status in general change one's behavioral and metabolic risk factors (think because I'm poor I don't have access to fresh produce, or something like that)? If so, the big conclusion gained by controlling for those factors seem nearly useless to me. We all know by now that metabolic and behavioral risk factors drive health outcomes. Are the authors just trying to point out that hope isn't lost regardless of race or socioeconomic status?