Posted on 12/01/2025 11:06:53 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
On paper, Lexington County, S.C., and Placer County, Calif., have a lot in common. They’re both big, wealthy, suburban counties with white supermajorities that border on their respective state’s capital cities…But when it comes to how long their residents can count on living, the parallels fall apart.
Placer has a Scandinavia-like life expectancy of 82.3 years. In Lexington, the figure is 77.7, a little worse than China’s.
Step back and look at a map of life expectancy across the country and the geographic patterns are as dramatic as they are obvious. If you live pretty much anywhere in the contiguous U.S., you can expect to live more than 78 years, unless you’re in the Deep South or the sprawling region I call Greater Appalachia, a region that stretches from southwestern Pennsylvania to the Ozarks and the Hill Country of Texas. Those two regions — which include all or parts of 16 deep red states and a majority of the House Republican caucus — have a life expectancy of 77, more than four and a half years lower than on the blue-leaning Pacific coastal plain.
In the smaller, redder regional culture of New France (in southern Louisiana) the gap is just short of six years. So large are the regional gaps that the poorest set of counties in predominantly blue Yankee Northeast actually have higher life expectancies than the wealthiest ones in the Deep South. At a population level, a difference of five years is like the gap separating the U.S. from decidedly unwealthy Mongolia, Belarus or Libya, and six years gets you to impoverished El Salvador and Egypt.
It’s as if we are living in different countries. Because in a very real historical and political sense, we are…
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Immune system damage from tattoo ink hasn’t been factored in the stats yet.
On the author...
“Colin Woodard is a POLITICO Magazine contributing writer and director of the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. He is the author of six books including American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.”
Okaaaaay...
They sure got it right with yankeedom. When i lived there for a while every old person I knew was dying right at 79 years old..including my grandma.
Yep....more leftist drivel....again.
Like anyone here actually believes anything from Polutico and these leftist dweeb authors.
Didn’t factor in buying more guns and ammo being tied to less money available for healthcare. Or the “Y’all, hold my beer and watch this!” factor.
First of all, this is not news.
Second of all, Blacks don’t live as long, and the proportion density in those deep south states is high.
And if you want proof: From AI
In Placer County, California, 1.3% of the population is Black or African American.
In Lexington County, South Carolina, 14.96% of the total population is Black or African American.
What totally discredits the author's theory is that Placer County has been strongly conservative and only very recently has been trending toward purple due to the influx of left-wing retirees from the San Francisco Bay Area.
They both were at the vanguard of their states’ 20th century Republican advances — Lexington in the 1960s when it pivoted from the racist Dixiecrats; Placer with the Reagan Revolution in 1980 — and twice voted for Donald Trump by wide margins. But when it comes to how long their residents can count on living, the parallels fall apart.
In the blue states they probably don’t hide their loaded firearms in the oven.
Politico continues with the stupid and failed century old notion that socialism/progressivism/statism can make everyone’s life better, if only we centrally-plan better, and find the political enemies obstructing it
They updated the lie by adding a bit of deconstructionist white-colonial race-marxism into the mix
It’s because they won’t stop killing each other.
Obviously the lingering effects of Reconstruction and ongoing persecution by the occupying forces.
Reparations are obviously in order for multigenerational southerners. Those that can prove ancestry in the South prior to 1865 should be entitled to Yankee money.
AI
Black life expectancy in the United States remains significantly lower than that of White individuals, with a national gap of approximately 9.57 years based on data from 2018–2019 in three large U.S. cities.
“El Norte”?
Sugar, white carbs, seed oils, lack of exercise. All found in great abundance in the South.
(I’ve been in Charlotte, NC for over 30 years now.)
Next question.
The Atlantic is probably using AI to find counties with similar populations that support their narrative without excluding confounding factors.
What would be the results if only whites were compared from both counties?
You also might want to control for things like obesity which might be more prevalent among whites in SC than CA.
This is all done to denigrate white Southerners who typically vote Republican.
I think if you want to live longer it would be smarter to lose weight, exercise and change your diet than the prescription implied by the Atlantic to vote Democrat.
Black population of Lexington County, SC: 15%
Black population of Placer County, CA: 2%
I have a physician friend who is from Iowa and he moved to South Carolina to a racially diverse small-sized city. He is shocked at how southern blacks do not take care of themselves. They wait until their leg needs to get amputated before coming in for medical care. Overweight, no exercise, poor diet. He advised that the difference between how poor whites in the Midwest take care of themselves is night and day compared to southern blacks. He was completely shocked by what he saw.
That AI response was lengthy, even noting that there are counties in the US with a Black White life expectancy gap of over 20 years (shorter for blacks).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.