The Surprising Connection Between Longevity and Voting Patterns
by Lou Schuler on Apr 22, 2008 7:50 AM EDT
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PrintWe all know that Americans live longer than ever before. We also know that life is unfair -- some live longer than others. What we didn't know, until today, is how much lifespan varies from one part of the country to the next.
It's starting to look at this map posted by USA Today and see the differences. The blue and dark blue areas of the map indicate the shortest lifespans. The light green and yellow show the longest lives.
The summary:
In sum, where you live makes a difference in how long you can expect to live.
Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington found that 4 percent of the male population and 19 percent of the female population experienced either declines or stagnation in their life expectancy in the '80s and '90s. The paper appears in the online non-profit journal The Public Library of Science.
Most counties with the worst downward swings were in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, and in Appalachia, extending into the southern portion of the Midwest and into Texas.
The male-female discrepancy is interesting. If you toggle back and forth on the USA Today map, you can see that in some parts of the country (Oregon and California jumped out at me) women are doing worse than men.
The reasons why life expectancy is falling back aren't particularly surprising. The researchers mention the usual suspects: obesity and smoking produce heart and lung disease, cancer, and diabetes.
Here's the really bad news:
"The worse off are getting worse," Ezzati says. "There's just more inequality."
Interestingly, inequality in health and longevity actually seems to favor one political party over the other. Almost all the states with dark-blue patches have voted for Republicans for president in recent elections. There's the Deep South, of course, but also Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Arizona, New Mexico.
But it doesn't follow that the states with the most yellow and light-green areas support Democrats. The Northeast, West Coast, and North Central U.S. have been solid for the Democratic Party the past few elections. Some other areas where people live longer, like Colorado and Iowa, are trending toward the Democrats. Virginia is trending Democratic as well, and those yellow and light-green pockets in the northern part of the state might explain why.
Conversely, people in Utah and Idaho are anomalies for having long lives and deeply conservative politics. Nebraska and Kansas also have lots of yellow and light green, but aren't likely to cast their electoral lot for a Democratic president in 2008. Alaska and Hawaii, two states with lots of light green, split their affiliations: Alaska is a stalwart Republican state (although that might change if every single elected Republican in the state ends up in legal trouble), while Hawaii goes for Democrats.
For once, however, race isn't a major factor in health and lifespan disparities:
The findings linking county of residence to health outcomes also mirror the results of other studies of health disparities within neighborhoods of individual counties. "We found the same thing in Alameda County [in Northern California]. Blacks in the flatlands live less long than blacks in the hills; whites in the flatlands live less long than whites in the hills," said Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Anthony Iton.
So that's some good news, I guess.
Tuesday blog meat
- Want to see what your body looks like on the inside? Check this out.
- Here's one for serious seamheads: How fast should a fastball be? John Walsh, writing for The Hardball Times, explains why throwing the hardest heaters doesn't necessarily produce the best outcomes. I won't give away his conclusions; a couple of them were true surprises for this lifelong baseball fan.
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Interesting...
"Some other areas where people live longer, like Colorado and Iowa, are trending toward the Democrats."
I don't think political leanings matter much to longevity here in Colorado. Looking at the map, nearly all of the yellow portions overlay Republican strongholds... especially in 1999 when the map was created (1992 was the last time Colorado voted Democrat in a presidential election... 1964 before that).
BTW, on the "Males" overlay, the dark blue in the southeast corner of the state is where the prisons are.
Employment situation is probably the bigger factor
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