6 ms·

American Lifespan By County

63 points by astrieanna 14y ago

antr 14y ago
just proves that having the most expensive (per capita) healthcare system in the globe does not really contribute to health(y) results
- corin_ 14y 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.
  - arethuza 14y 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.
    - corin_ 14y ago
      In my book, the fact that the US healthcare system excludes people who can't afford it automatically drops it to bottom of the list, regardless of how amazing it might be for the rich.
      - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
        Excludes is an extreme view. Anybody with the wit to stand in line can get free healthcare at an emergency room or local hospital. I value living in a place where I can work harder to get better things for my family. Or work less hard and coast, my choice. Making money is not a sport or game in America. Its real, its important, its meaningful and it motivates millions of us to work hard and smart. I can pull out my gold card and get to the head of the line for a heart transplant, sure. That's not a failure, thats one of the strengths of a capitalist/free market country. It can be cruel, but life is cruel and honestly there is no 'fair' way to ration such healthcare. If you tried, the 'black market' (read: free market) would and does compensate anyway. The free market motivates me. Some hunky-dory view of the world as full of free services for everybody does not.
        corin_ 14y ago
        Countries with free health care for everybody can still offer plenty of incentives for making money, I don't think anyone would argue the UK isn't a capitalist country, and if you came to live here I'm confident that the NHS wouldn't be enough to make you stop caring about wealth. I'm not in favour of communism, but as far as I'm concerned, medical care should be considered a right not a priviledge - there's really no benefit to denying it for the poor. (For the record, I fit into the group of people who could easily affordto go private with Bupa here in the UK, and I'm far happier paying more in taxes to subsidise the NHS.)
        arethuza 14y ago
        I would urge caution when using the terms "free" when discussing the NHS in a context like HN - I know you mean "free at the point of delivery" when you say "free" but many people won't! :-)
        corin_ 14y ago
        Obviously it has to be paid for, and I did end with the words "paying more in taxes to subsidise the NHS", but it's not as simple as paying for in advance, because people who don't make enough money to pay taxes, the unemployed, or people who need healthcare that costs more than the taxes they have paid do get it free.
        javert 14y ago
        The UK is not a capitalist country in the proper sense of the term, it's a mixed economy. I believe keeping what you earn is a right. You believe free medical care is a right. Not mutually compatible. Glad I don't live in the same country as you.
        corin_ 14y ago
        Is there any true capitalist country then? Where do you live that you don't have to pay any taxes?
- rollypolly 14y 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!
  - thejteam 14y 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 14y ago
It's interesting the places where there's a large apparent change across a border - for example North Dakota / Montana.
- gyardley 14y ago
  Likely the border of an Indian reservation.
fierarul 14y ago
What the article doesn't seem to link is this: http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali... , a nice visualisation.
Someone 14y 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.
- dredmorbius 14y 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 14y 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.
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      Exactly - at birth a man is expected to live until age 75. At age 65 he is expected to live until 81. http://aging.senate.gov/crs/aging1.pdf http://aging.senate.gov/crs/aging1.pdf (see page 8)
      - dredmorbius 14y ago
        Fair point. Though we'd be talking moving from a place with a median age of, well, roughly median age. Greatest mortality is in infancy, again in the teens / early 20s (mostly males from violence/accidents), then gradually increases past 40 due to general mortality (disease, illness, cancer, etc.). I'm not sure that the delta from, say, 40-ish median to the slightly older skew of a retirement-centric Florida community would be great.
cdeonier 14y 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.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jp...
- jonmc12 14y ago
  Exactly, this is likely the most meaningful statistical correlation. Here is a map by county: http://www.americanobesity.org/obesityInAmerica.htm http://www.americanobesity.org/obesityInAmerica.htm Obesity has been found to take 10yrs off lifespan. Also, smoking: http://labs.slate.com/articles/cigarette-map/ http://labs.slate.com/articles/cigarette-map/ (click tab to see by county).
- yummyfajitas 14y 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".
OllieJones 14y 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 14y 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.
  - dredmorbius 14y 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.
_delirium 14y 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-visualizations http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Iv 14y 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.
- rmc 14y 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.
  - jeltz 14y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Savoy2.png
tome 14y 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 14y 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 http://bigthink.com/ideas/21383 Industry (dots) lined up with Obama voters from the article: http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsoverlay1.jpg http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsov...
monkeypizza 14y 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.
monkeypizza 14y 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.
- JoeAltmaier 14y 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 14y 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.
zwieback 14y 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 14y ago
I think this is what you're after: http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...
bane 14y 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.

63 points by astrieanna 14y ago

antr 14y ago

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

corin_ 14y 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.
- arethuza 14y 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.
  - corin_ 14y ago
    In my book, the fact that the US healthcare system excludes people who can't afford it automatically drops it to bottom of the list, regardless of how amazing it might be for the rich.
    - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
      Excludes is an extreme view. Anybody with the wit to stand in line can get free healthcare at an emergency room or local hospital. I value living in a place where I can work harder to get better things for my family. Or work less hard and coast, my choice. Making money is not a sport or game in America. Its real, its important, its meaningful and it motivates millions of us to work hard and smart. I can pull out my gold card and get to the head of the line for a heart transplant, sure. That's not a failure, thats one of the strengths of a capitalist/free market country. It can be cruel, but life is cruel and honestly there is no 'fair' way to ration such healthcare. If you tried, the 'black market' (read: free market) would and does compensate anyway. The free market motivates me. Some hunky-dory view of the world as full of free services for everybody does not.
      - corin_ 14y ago
        Countries with free health care for everybody can still offer plenty of incentives for making money, I don't think anyone would argue the UK isn't a capitalist country, and if you came to live here I'm confident that the NHS wouldn't be enough to make you stop caring about wealth. I'm not in favour of communism, but as far as I'm concerned, medical care should be considered a right not a priviledge - there's really no benefit to denying it for the poor. (For the record, I fit into the group of people who could easily affordto go private with Bupa here in the UK, and I'm far happier paying more in taxes to subsidise the NHS.)
        arethuza 14y ago
        I would urge caution when using the terms "free" when discussing the NHS in a context like HN - I know you mean "free at the point of delivery" when you say "free" but many people won't! :-)
        corin_ 14y ago
        Obviously it has to be paid for, and I did end with the words "paying more in taxes to subsidise the NHS", but it's not as simple as paying for in advance, because people who don't make enough money to pay taxes, the unemployed, or people who need healthcare that costs more than the taxes they have paid do get it free.
        javert 14y ago
        The UK is not a capitalist country in the proper sense of the term, it's a mixed economy. I believe keeping what you earn is a right. You believe free medical care is a right. Not mutually compatible. Glad I don't live in the same country as you.
        corin_ 14y ago
        Is there any true capitalist country then? Where do you live that you don't have to pay any taxes?
rollypolly 14y 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!
- thejteam 14y 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 14y ago

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

gyardley 14y ago
Likely the border of an Indian reservation.

fierarul 14y ago

What the article doesn't seem to link is this: http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali... , a nice visualisation.

Someone 14y 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.

dredmorbius 14y 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 14y 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.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Exactly - at birth a man is expected to live until age 75. At age 65 he is expected to live until 81. http://aging.senate.gov/crs/aging1.pdf http://aging.senate.gov/crs/aging1.pdf (see page 8)
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      Fair point. Though we'd be talking moving from a place with a median age of, well, roughly median age. Greatest mortality is in infancy, again in the teens / early 20s (mostly males from violence/accidents), then gradually increases past 40 due to general mortality (disease, illness, cancer, etc.). I'm not sure that the delta from, say, 40-ish median to the slightly older skew of a retirement-centric Florida community would be great.

cdeonier 14y 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.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jp...

jonmc12 14y ago
Exactly, this is likely the most meaningful statistical correlation. Here is a map by county: http://www.americanobesity.org/obesityInAmerica.htm http://www.americanobesity.org/obesityInAmerica.htm Obesity has been found to take 10yrs off lifespan. Also, smoking: http://labs.slate.com/articles/cigarette-map/ http://labs.slate.com/articles/cigarette-map/ (click tab to see by county).
yummyfajitas 14y 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".

OllieJones 14y 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 14y 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.
- dredmorbius 14y 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.

_delirium 14y 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-visualizations http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Iv 14y 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.

rmc 14y 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.
- jeltz 14y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Savoy2.png

tome 14y 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 14y 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 http://bigthink.com/ideas/21383 Industry (dots) lined up with Obama voters from the article: http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsoverlay1.jpg http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsov...

monkeypizza 14y 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.

monkeypizza 14y 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.

JoeAltmaier 14y 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 14y 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.

zwieback 14y ago

mmaunder 14y ago

I think this is what you're after: http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...

bane 14y 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.