America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy

Politico Magazine ^ | 2023 | Colin Woodard

[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…

[Wallace T.]

Colin Woodward’s book parallels the works of Joel Garreau (Nine Nations of North America written in 1981), David Hackett Fisher (Albion’s Seed written in 1989), and Kevin Phillips (The Emerging Republican Majority written in 1970). A Cliff’s Notes version of these books is that the political and social cultures in American regions derive from whatever British or other European group settled in that area. Some of this analysis is sound, but there are flaws. For instance, lumping Rust Belt western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia with the High Plains of West Texas as Greater Appalachia is nonsensical. There is little that is Dutch about Greater New York City other than some street and town names and a preference for Heineken beer. You have to account for changing religious views over the years, economic shifts from ag to industrial to service/tech bases, and the effects of post-1965 immigration, legal or not.

[wintertime]

I scanned the article but saw nothing related to murder and violence of other kinds.

JD Vance in his autobiography plainly pointed out the violence found in the Appalachian community, and of course, violence and crime is notablable among blacks ( young black males, especially).

It appears that the author moves forward with the erroneous idea that all cultures are equally responsible both within white and black societies. To the author it is merely access to, and money spent on, healthcare that is the cause of the difference in life expectancy.

[ChuckHam]

Yawn. No one was nasty with you at all and anyone besides you wouldn’t take it that way. I simply told you that there is plenty of good food in SA and you haven’t refuted my statements at all.

My statement about tortillas was simply stating a fact. Hispanics in SA and whites both are fat because they eat cheap food. Did I really have to spell it out for you?

Quit being such an emotional basket case and move on. You said there was no good food in SA and I proved you wrong. No need to go leftist and say I was nasty.

Since you appear to be ignorant of what is truly available in SA, I suggest you go to Groomers Seafood in SA and buy flown in fish that is excellent.

BTW, I put out facts about your ignorant comment of there not being good food in SA and you got you NY self butt hurt. That’s a you problem.

Typical NY asshole.

[stanne]

“ Typical NY asshole.”

Nice

[ChuckHam]

Wear your shoe.

[sopo]

mostly a liberal policy screed gussied up with medical statistics. Notes Wisconsin with its “Republican gerrymandered legislature” did not expand Medicaid, the action which he most focuses on as the disparity between “good policies”
deserving of praise in surrounding states and laissez-faire policies responsible for early deaths in those that did not expand. Well, since he notes the anomaly, wouldn’t the next step be to show Wisconsin outcomes inferior to the surrounding area? .... silence. I am guessing that Medicaid expansion made it available to 30% vs. 20% by expansion; to make the argument, doesn’t he have to show that the lowest quintile ( if that’s what it is) have similar outcomes in both sets of states? ( i.e. Medicaid exapanders vs. Medicaid non-expanders) but that 20< but <30 % income group where the Medicaid eligibilty should enable better medical care in expansion states is where the improvement to access is shown? The great Democrat healthcare idea is supposed to be “Medicare for all ;” Medicare is available in all states. As we have hashed and rehashed for years, Obamacare in the Zeke Emanuel intent was to keep you going until 75 and then ration you to the grave. Since he offers Mexicans as the zenith of health ( of those he mentions), wouldn’t focusing on that demo be most instructive, especially in terms of public policy, since that is the factor he sees as most critical.(Poor editing botches the point about Mexicans in terms of actual life expectancy). Lastly, the experts he quotes seem to be talking out of their hats, offering make-it -up as you go along crafted from their own stereotypes. Actually, he’s made a good argument for contrails lingering in hot humid air longer than in cooler climes.