
The Widely Divergent Life Expectancy in Every County in the US - Four_Star
http://thesoundingline.com/the-widely-divergent-life-expectancy-in-every-county-in-the-us/
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ajtulloch
Note that’s it’s also incredibly localized, even in stereotypically “wealthy”
areas. For example, life expectancy varies by >10 years across neighborhoods
_in San Francisco County_
([https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Health_Human_S...](https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Health_Human_Services/Level_3_-_Public_Health/BARHII_Health%20Inequities%20in%20the%20Bay%20Area.pdf),
slide 32).

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Blinks-
For anyone who wants to check out the direct correlation mentioned in the
article between this heatmap and the obesity heatmap, here is a link:
[https://maxmasnick.com/2011/11/15/obesity_by_county/](https://maxmasnick.com/2011/11/15/obesity_by_county/)

Unlike the map linked in the article this obesity heatmap is also by county so
it makes for an excellent comparison.

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tyingq
Interesting they don't mention their extreme example (Oglala Lakota County) is
an American Indian reservation.

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gammateam
because it shouldn't matter.

The separation of powers from any reservation to the Federal Trust is
completely arbitrary and is only active when it is convenient. Congress can do
anything it wants to a reservation and faces zero consequences. Host States
can and actually do almost anything to reservations and face zero
consequences.

and that can extend to building up and improving conditions closer to a base
line. even when recognizing that each reservation is entirely different,
despite some common outcomes.

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tyingq
It matters in terms of understanding how much of the gap in lifespan could be
addressed specifically by solely addressing issues on reservations.

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chimeracoder
> by solely addressing issues on reservations.

The IHS itself is the culprit. It's hard to improve life expectancy when your
only access to medical care is through a system that's not only overcrowded
and underfunded, but which has truly zero incentive to provide quality medical
care to its patients (and a long, documented history of corruption and
outright exploitation of its patients).

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tyingq
It is one culprit of many.

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mrfusion
Isn’t this basically just a proxy of poverty and drug use?

I think a more interesting map would be life expectancy of those over 70.

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pfschell
This data is meaningless for analysis without exposing the racial breakdown.
That South Dakota county is almost certainly nearly all American Indians. The
big red patch in the south is very likely largely influenced by lower African
American lifespans.

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cimmanom
How does that make it meaningless? Yes, certain segments of the population are
even more underserved than others, but that’s just more evidence for the fact
that we’re doing a crap job of keeping people healthy.

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chimeracoder
> How does that make it meaningless? Yes, certain segments of the population
> are even more underserved than others, but that’s just more evidence for the
> fact that we’re doing a crap job of keeping people healthy.

Because by not breaking out the single largest compounding factor, it's
masking the real problem underlying this issue: there's a massive disparity in
outcomes for people of different races.

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forkandwait
Perhaps poverty, access to healthcare, or education is a bigger factor? Do you
have evidence race is the "real problem"?

In Washington state, the counties with the worst mortality are 95% white, with
5% native (Grays Harbor and Okanagan)

(poverty, education, race are of course very correlated)

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ethanwillis
Race in fact does play a big factor in health disparities. For example,
African Americans are at much higher risk for heart health related issues. And
when heart disease is the number 1 killer of people of all races.. well that
just doesn't bode well for the life expectancy of AA.

And it's not _just_ because minority populations have worse access to
healthcare. There are in fact genetic components that predispose different
races to different diseases.

Japanese people, Glaucoma. AA, heart disease. White people, Celiac.

Basically there's multiple components: Race, Healthcare access, Poverty,
Education, Local Cultural proclivities for: diet, exercise, etc.

[https://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/26/2/247.full](https://jasn.asnjournals.org/content/26/2/247.full)

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barry-cotter
How shocking that a massively multi-ethnic country that contains 5% of the
human population has very large gaps in life expectancy if you measure by
county.

If you look at European countries, a much coarser level of measurement the gap
is 83-71, 12 years.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_b...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_life_expectancy)

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awakeasleep
It is shocking because we don't officially acknowledge the existence of social
classes in the USA.

All men are created equal here. It's counter to our national narrative to
think of communities and areas where your life is fucked just because you're
born in the wrong spot.

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forkandwait
Or fucked because you were born to poor uneducated parents in the right
spot...

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ivl
It's kind of disappointing, but I'm not at all shocked to see the South having
the largest area in the red, and the North East and the West coast doing well.
I'd really like to see this map over time, though. I think that would be a
really interesting addition to the data, as it would give a really good
picture of which areas are getting better or worse.

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subcosmos
I built this viz a few years back to visualize the top causes of death by
state :
[https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap](https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap)

Still interesting to me how bad people in Alaska have it.

