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US Life Expectancy Can Vary By 20 Years Depending On Where You Live (npr.org)
After analyzing records from every U.S. county between 1980 and 2014, Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, and his team found that life expectancy can vary by more than 20 years from county to county. "In counties with the longest lifespans, people tended to live about 87 years, while people in places with the shortest lifespans typically made it only about 67," reports NPR. From the report: The discrepancy is equivalent to the difference between the low-income parts of the developing world and countries with high incomes, Murray notes. For example, it's about the same gap as the difference between people living in Japan, which is among countries with the longest lifespans, and India, which has one of the shortest, Murray says. The U.S. counties with the longest life expectancy are places like Marin County, Calif., and Summit County, Colo. -- communities that are well-off and more highly educated. Counties with the shortest life expectancy tend to have communities that are poorer and less educated. The lowest is in Oglala Lakota County, S.D., which includes the Pine Ridge Native American reservation. Many of the other counties with the lowest life expectancy are clustered along the lower Mississippi River Valley as well as parts of West Virginia and Kentucky, according to the analysis. There's no sign of the gap closing. In fact, it's appears to be widening. Between 1980 and 2014, the gap between the highest and lowest lifespans increased by about two years. The reasons for the gap are complicated. But it looks like the counties with the lowest lifespans haven't made much progress fighting significant health problems such as smoking and obesity. The study has been published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
I live adjacent to the Oglala Lakota Reservation. It's a massive ghetto. I'm not surprised in the least that the expected lifespan is so short -- in fact, I'm kinda surprised it's that long. The poverty here is worse than most people realize exists in America. The hardest part is that there's literally no industry for these people to use as a means to climb out of poverty. They receive enough allowance from the government to stay alive -- and that's it.
I'm not a native (heck, my dad wasn't even born in this country), but I feel deeply for our fellow men & women on the res. The USA forced them to live there, forced them into the ghetto -- and now they're too impoverished to ever leave. There's no work, no hope -- the res is the most depressing place imaginable. The lifespan information should be used as an indicator of how badly communities need help.
Can they? Do the skills transfer that easily? Are there sufficient clean energy projects in the areas where coal minors are located? Do these jobs pay as well, given that at least some coal minors have union jobs?
I'm not a Republican but I do agree that progressives have not adequately addressed the problems these workers face. I don't think the Democrats wanted to admit that there are losers in the transition to clean energy other than big bad fossil fuel companies.
Nor do a I believe that Trump has any real solutions for the majority of blue color workers. In fact I see very little hope for that group of people, - not because of clean energy, immigration, or manufacturing leaving the states, but because automation will eliminate those kinds of jobs and lots of others.
We need a radically different approach that I haven't heard a single politician in the states talk seriously about.
Really? A hopeless life? Being forced into a miserable reservation? Stripped of human dignity?
They are not "forced" to live on the reservation. They are US citizens and can live anywhere in the country. Those that leave the reservation tend to do far better than those who stay. One of my co-workers in San Jose is a Crow Indian. She abstains from drinking alcohol, and she tries to avoid sugar and starch as much as possible. She has relatives living on the Crow Reservation in Montana, and they have the same problems as Pine Ridge with alcoholism and diabetes, despite the Sioux and Crow having a very different historical relationship with the American government: the Crow were allies of the US in the wars against the Sioux and Cheyenne.
The ACA made every poor, cheap and lazy person contribute something to the unlimited healthcare they got for free before. The Republicans plan takes away the mandatory buying of insurance and replaced it with either nothing or more free unlimited health care.
The ACA had flaws but it set a minimum standard of care, made everyone buy into it, to defray the cost.
the acha under Republicans increases costs by letting people choose not to have coverage, and decreases the ability to get care.
Two governor's are already taking the options that Republicans siad are posion pills that no sane person would take.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.