Hacker News Reader

Comment by ftxbro | Hacker News Reader

I didn't read every word of the article but are they really controlling for net worth?

> And people in the Left Coast’s poorest quartile of counties live 2.4 years longer than those in the richest quartile counties in the Deep South.

That's super indirect it doesn't mean that there is a regional effect. Maybe a rich quartile county in the deep south has one multibillionaire who has good healthcare and a hundred thousand poor people who have bad healthcare because they are poor. Or maybe the poorest quartile counties in that 'left coast' region are still richer than the richest quartile counties in the 'deep south' region, probably not but they don't say.

View on HN

The Deep South isn’t that poor.

The top quartile in Georgia starts at around 75k where it’s 86k in California. Hell the median income in Georgia is 61,500$ in a state with a relatively low cost of living.

Not relevant at all but perhaps of comparative interest to some: the British average 2023 yearly income is sterling equivalent of $37,000.

You have to add in the costs of health insurance premiums/deductibles/out of pocket maximums to get to a sort of comparable figure.

Easily $400 to $1,200 per person per month depending on age, plus probability of $3k to $7k deductible, plus probability of $5k to $10k out of pocket maximum.

Although, US pay statistics exclude the employer subsidized portion of the health insurance premiums (usually ~70%), but they also exclude the monetary cost of the volatility due to it being tied to your employment.

Also, these costs will be more heavily subsidized by employers for higher paid populations, and less subsidized for low paid populations.

Georgia has Atlanta. I always figured deep, poor south was cotton belt land in Alabama and Mississippi.

If you’re going to look on a county by county basis some parts of the Deep South are really poor. But by slicing off the top quartile overall you cut out the poverty and are looking at a very different population.

Further without the extreme property prices you see in costal cities a family pulling in 75k has very different living expenses.

You are really grasping at straws here. This is an instance where applying Occam’s Razor applies. At any rate, whatever the causes it is still the case that there are regional differences in life expectancy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com