America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy | Hacker News Reader

America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy

politico.com

25 pointspg_123411 comments

The article implied a causal relationship (blue partisanship causes higher life expectancy) but overlooks relevant changes in partisan alignment. For example the article shows that life expectancy in the tidewater region is higher than yankeedom. But Virginia was solidly red from 1950 until 2008. By contrast, Appalachia was mostly blue from the FDR era until 2000. Look at the counties that voted for Carter twice and then for Clinton.

Meanwhile, most of these life expectancy patterns existed before these political realignments. For example, West Virginia had low life expectancy in 1990 as well, despite voting for Dukakis by almost the same margin as his home state of Massachusetts.

Even just looking at the current statistics it doesn’t map cleanly to partisanship: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/life_expectancy/li.... Idaho is about as deep red as it gets. It voted for Trump 2:1 and hasn’t voted democrat since LBJ. So is Utah. But both have high life expectancy, similar to Oregon or Vermont.

Also, the whole exercise is meaningless without adjusting for race. Race gaps are bigger than state gaps. California does artificially well because Hispanics and Asians live longer than whites. Using 2012 data, whites in California have a lower life expectancy than whites in Idaho or Iowa: https://www.livescience.com/18835-race-lifespan-states.html

Did you read the article? He goes back and talks about the founding cultures of these regions. The partisan nature of it is also a consequence of that rather than politics causing the divides.

The author brings up racial divides several times and show variance graphs based on several races, but is obviously not comprehensively in this short article.

The sub caption refers to “Centuries-old settlement patterns — and the attitudes they spawned about government.” The implication is that more government would increase life expectancy. The founding cultures are a real thing, but they don’t map in a stable way to partisanship. The south and Appalachia were core parts of the FDR coalition.

I suspect what you’re actually seeing is differences in food and lifestyle traditions.

Mormon Utah and Idaho are outliers on lots of things. For example, teenage pregnancy tends to correlate with overall fertility rate - except in Utah and Idaho.

Given the legacy of white privilege in American society, why do white people have lower life expectancy than their counterparts in Canada and Western Europe, as well as per capita suicide and psychiatric disorder rates far higher than their Black, Asian or Latino peers? Their conclusion: “Whiteness encourages whites to reject policies designed to help the poor and reduce inequality because of animosity toward people of color as well as being unaware that the poor include a great many white people.”

This isn't supported by the data though is it?

That said, African Americans actually fare a bit better, relatively speaking, in Greater Appalachia (where their life expectancy is 74.2) than in many other regions, including the Deep South (where it’s 73.6) and even the Far West (74.1) and Yankeedom (73.6).

Hispanics actually have much higher life expectancy than whites in the U.S. Researchers call this the “Hispanic Paradox” because it confounds the usual associations between socioeconomic status and life expectancy

Which both contradict an earlier quote:

This is logical considering the overall values and variation in health and opportunity of Yankeedom are more favorable than the Deep South or Greater Appalachia,” she said. “There are regions of the country with structural barriers to health, where types of long-standing discrimination and disinvestment have occurred through policies and practices applied and reinforced by people with more power.

The author's claims about regions and about health disparities caused by different views of healthcare policy doesn't seem supported by the data. The racist South, built by feudal slave lords, is equal to Yankeedom in terms of lifespan for Black people and worse for white people. That doesn't fit the narrative that whites in the South choose policies that limit Blacks. The "Hispanic Paradox" also calls into question whether the regions, which seem made up, even matter.

> The geography of U.S. life expectancy — and the policy environments that determine it — is the result of differences that are regional, cultural and political

The attribution of all differences in America to political affiliation is a bizarre past time. So many missing confounding variables.

Life expectancy has a lot to do with healthcare, which is most definitely a political topic in America.

Are you certain of this? I thought life expectancy had more to do with environment and lifestyle than health care.

Not surprising as a whole, but really interesting subregions.

Especially the Far West (not to be confused with the Left Coast)

“Far West (pop. 28.7 million) Extreme environment stopped eastern cultures in their path, so settlement largely controlled by distant corporations or federal government via deployment of railroads, dams, irrigation and mines; exploited as an internal colony, with lasting resentments.”

This Article previously Posted and Discussed on HN: (37-comments - 2023-09-02) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37361070

https://archive.is/vJ2JH

I mean how much of this is attributed to diet and exercise?

Just hand out at a vegan restaurant, then hang out at a fondu bar.

Or go to a pilates class. This isn’t rocket science.

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