For a woman born in Arkansas in 1900—a time when healthcare was not nearly as good or as accessible as it is today—life expectancy was 75.7 years. By the year 2000, the life expectancy of that woman’s great, great granddaughter had only bumped up to a minuscule 76.6. A whole century of medical breakthroughs, antibiotics, and vaccines later, only amounts to a less than two-year bump.
This comes to us from a study by the Yale School of Public Health, published in JAMA Network Open, which analyzed data from 77 million women and 102 million men born between 1900 and 2000. It turns out that where you’re born in America might be a better predictor of how long you’ll live than your genes or your diet.
The national trend shows the life expectancy of a man in that time jumped up from 62.8 to 80.3 and women from 73.8 to 84.1 over the century. But in some southern states, like in Oklahoma, a woman born in the year 2000 actually has a lower life expectancy than a woman born in 1900 in Oklahoma.
Life expectancy shouldn’t be a lottery based on zip code. But in America, it often is.
Southern states like Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama are also lagging far behind places like New York and California. Suppose you want an example of a shining success. In that case, women in Washington, DC, born in the year 2000 have the highest life expectancy at 93, while also making the largest improvement since 1900 when a DC area woman’s life expectancy was a mere 63.9.
DC area men saw a similar jump in that time, from 48.7 years to 86.5. Meanwhile, Southern men might want to consider having their will prepped before they hit 72.
The gap can be blamed on a variety of factors, all of which you probably know by heart, so sing along with me: poverty, terrible public health policy, lack of paid sick leave, no affordable healthcare, and workers aren’t getting paid a livable minimum wage.
Essentially, all the stuff red states claim turns a person into a spoiled, unmotivated brat also happens to keep them alive much longer, so they can live happier, healthier lives that allow them to continue to grease the economy’s wheels by being healthy, motivated members of our workforce.
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