After squinting at the graphic, I'm pleased to note that Las Vegas is in the "light green"... Although it is a bit distressing to see the outlaying regions in the pink.

I think it's far more depressing to see women are far more likely to die younger than men, but then I remember it used to be that women out lived men by quite a bit, so maybe this is just evening things out.

"So what is killing people at younger ages now that didn't kill them in the 1970s?"

As it seems to coincide with the Bible Belt, I guess the answer is... religion.

Or maybe it has more to do with rich/poor divide, which, makes a lot more sense, and also kinda fits in with the religion issue.

All that red for females today is pretty disconcerting.

@aspiringexpatriate: So, you're saying it's gods will? ;)

I saw someone on the news the other day put forth the idea we are rapidly becoming the Wealthiest Third World Country in the world.

But whatever. I'm glad my taxes aren't going to help some stranger stay alive.

If this isn't graphic proof that health care is less accessible now than it was in the 1960's than I don't know what is.

HMO's and corporate medicine as well as corporate drug pushing have made basic medical care a thing of the past. What I find really interesting is that the health issues appear to be worst in places with bad public transportation (with an exception for Florida probably because there are more doctors per person there than anywhere else in the country except maybe Manhattan). The demise of bus transport and rise of 3 hour commutes coupled with a diet of burgers and longer work weeks mean that people just aren't getting the exercise they once did. I mean Georgia in the 1960's was mostly rural, even near a big city like Atlanta. Now if you aren't stuck in a regional traffic jam every day your lucky.

Its probably a combination of lots of factors, health care, access to wealth and education, job health and safety, and adequate transportation. So, isn't the real question is what is this country going to do to fix it?

It would be nice to see how this would be different if they removed things that you are almost certain won't lead to your demise. For example, I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to die from AIDS or being shot, so how does that affect my life expectancy? Also, I wonder if this includes military deaths. That can have a substantial impact on the life expectancy.

@aspiringexpatriate: Yeah I think it's entirely about rich vs. poor, which is what the researchers say in the paper. Not sure if they investigated religion as an angle.

@male roof blower (CFB): It included murder and violence, but I'm not sure whether military deaths would fall under those categories. Interesting question.

@male roof blower (CFB): I don't know, if you keep blowing males on roofs , you may have problem with AIDS somewhere down the line.

Can you say bible belt?

Looks like the Bible Belt is doing terrible, but that's no surprise to me. When you live your life under some invisible guys thumb and his set of rules (which many contradict each other), stress is bound to happen. Also toggle in some crappy eating habits, and working yourself to death on minimum wage and not having any vacation time or health benefits.

Makes sense to me.

My guess is: poor diet of processed food, inadequate health coverage, worsening standard of reproductive health care for women. The States has a terrible infant mortality rate for a developed nation.

As for military deaths, I doubt they're statistically significant. Several thousand soldiers have died in Iraq, but if you drop that into the pool of the US population it won't make a ripple in the figures. Although if you're measuring by county, maybe it would make a difference after all. Anyway, you'd be better off looking at defense spending versus health care and social programs. That will tell you more about life expectancy.

Oh yes, and people keep dying in car accidents. Why do we get into those things every day?

So when I'm home for the summer my life expectancy increases, but when I go back to college I'm screwed.

Tell those people in the south to lay off the grits.

I think we finally know the Cylons evil plan for us humans now.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: Perhaps I should change my name to "male roof-mounted blower" to emphasize that my name is not implying that I blow roofs, rather that I am a blower hanging from the roof. That, or maybe I should just go back to being known as ceilingFANBOY, considering that is what most of my followers know me as anyway and even I get confused at times because I'm not used to seeing my name as male roof blower when people comment to me so I don't notice some of the replies people make to me.

@palinode: I don't know, the military deaths could have some significance when you consider that, at least from what I would think, a higher percentage of the population in that decreasing life expectancy bible belt area are likely to join the military. Also, because the age of people dying in the military is substantially lower than the life expectancy, the effect of each individual dying on the life expectancy is amplified. It's kind of like how it is easier to drop from an A- to a B than it is to go from a B+ to an A. One person dying at the age of 20 is going to affect the life expectancy more than one person dying at the age of 80 when the life expectancy is 74.

You're ignoring the year: 1983, when the Neocon Revolution took deep root and began fellating the pharmaceutical/medical industry instead of holding it to a high standard; the goal shifted from the noble liberal aim of providing health care for all, to the craven conservative agenda of making everything -- including your health -- a marketable commodity.

At this point it's ridiculous to argue anything other than that 25 years of Republican/conservative influence has reduced a once-envied medical system into one that is literally summarized as "your money or your life". Unfortunately, the poor don't have enough quarters for the health-care vending machine, and if they live in a conservative state they don't have an adequate social health care network to fall back on as they do in those richly-green-colored liberal states up there.

As a transplanted northerner, I can also say that things down here like healthy foods and eating habits are actually looked down on by the locals who see such things as 'fruity' and 'liberal'. Thanksgiving dinner is deep-fried in fat, people drunkenly play with brand-new hunting knives on Christmas Eve, and dads go shootin' in the backyard while their kids crack their skulls open on trampolines. Houses are occasionally built to code, toxic chemical storage facilities burn for days, and only the bottom-feeding doctors would bother to hang a shingle in these parts because nobody in the 'Big City' will have them.

While masters of acquiring power, the neocons are absolutely inept at wielding it. They're murdering their own voter base!

@male roof blower (CFB):

Oddly if you don't get killed in combat your life expectancy as a poor schlub in the military is substantially higher than that of a poor schlub civilian life. Mostly because of compulsory access to health care, better diet and health plans (6 mile run before breakfast Sarge?).

Of course they could just line you up and make you drink radioactive milk, or inject you with syphilis but the government would never do anything like that... right?

Some of these figures are a little weird. I was looking at Tennessee and some of the counties I am very familar with are red.(I am from Memphis, which is yellow...hoooray). The red county at the top of TN to the left is Robertson county where the city of Adams is.(Bell Witch is based there. Had a movie made about it, but it was garbage. What Donald Sutherland movie isn't? Blair witch kind of is based of the Bell witch story also). Anyways, there are like 500 people there and there have never really been a lot more than that. How the hell is it red? There really isn't even fast food there. By the way, here is the link for a larger map. And some of the other red counties are just farm land with population densities of like 42 per square mile.(Hardeman and McNairy are good examples.) There are more cows than people. To put it in perspective. L.A. has a population density of 8,205/sq mi. Memphis the town closest to these red counties has a density of 2,327.4/sq mi(facts from wikipedia). This actually looks like trends in people moving from the boondocks to big cities. Then again, it could be the youtube and Burger King. Well, I just found it interesting that a place with like 500 people is basically a death camp.

By the way, here is a larger version of the map, so you can see exactly how unhealthy you and your friends are.

[medicine.plosjournals.org]

@palinode: Access to health care doesn't do much to stop someone from smoking or eating a poor diet. Doctors can only do so much. Probably one of the most depressing thing you do learn in medical school. You can treat diabetes and lung cancer, but if people insist on slowly killing themselves, they're going to be successful. I'd say it's much more a culture and education problem, rather than a health care and infrastructure one (not that those don't play some effect.)

@Maddrjeffe: I wonder how much difference it makes though on whether or not you went to battle. A lot of people who actually see battle end up with problems that lead to suicide or health problems that don't show themselves until later. Meanwhile, people who never went to battle reap the benefits of being more fit and having better access to health care without those negatives that come from battle.

Apropos The Onion article title:

"Little Debbie defeats Jennie Craig in midnight showdown."

@munkles:

"While masters of acquiring power, the neocons are absolutely inept at wielding it. They're murdering their own voter base!"

Nah! They've merely arranged for them to self-destruct before they grow old enough to realize they've been screwed, used, and abused.

Wait till a few more common bacteria become medically resistant then we'll see a real drop in life expectancy.

Quality of Life drops after you hit 65 so to me does it really matter if you tack on 20 more years to that if you spend every forth day in a clinic or a hospital. Or have to decide if you want to deal with your prostate problems and not being able to pee for days or your sinus issues that may make you go blind because you can't afford both the drugs you're on and there's no generic for either of them just yet.

Quantity < Quality

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: they are though, our taxes go to our gov't's third world charity contributions all the time. but strangers in our own country? oh no way we help them.

@Final: Well, next step is improving quality of the first 80 years so that we keep living beyond that, no?

@icelight: Careful there... suggesting people are responsible for their own lives will get you labeled as a "craven neocon".

@dead_red_eyes: But is the Bible Belt the cause of declining health, or merely a by-product?

I'm beginning to agree with Obama's comment on bitterness. It's no coincidence that fundamentalist religion has the strongest grip in regions where people's potential is limited.

The US isn't even in the top 40 worldwide for many health and quality of life indices such as infant survival etc. It's also been trying to export its poor healthcare system (via pharmaceutical lobbyists) to countries like Australia in return for trade concessions.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Richard Feynman's memoirs:

"It's so terrible that heart disease is the leading cause of death."

"So, what would you prefer the leading cause of death to be?"

People obsess over this too much, IMO. You're never going to out of life alive, so you might as well try to enjoy it.

@munkles: it's really too bad there weren't more intelectually superiour northern liberals around to improve life expectancy via bigotry and ignorance. seriously through, who cares about hypocrasy when you're advancing a political agenda? when you're trying to sound like the advocate of a group of people it helps to let your complete and abject hatred of them shine through just a little less clearly. based on your discription it sounds like we're better off just letting all those ignorant, southern, dumb-asses kill themselves through sheer stupidity.

Pharmaceuticals, pollution, fast food? And why women specifically across most of the Bible Belt?

@Final: And you get to spend those first 65 years working.

I remember when I was in college learning that subsistence cultures only spend about 18 hours a week working. 18 hours a week to stay alive! We work 40, sometimes more, just to get by, so we can keep on doing it for well over half our lives.

Sometimes progress isn't so great.

@The Blow Leprechaun: If by working you mean surfing the internet, sure.

@Maddrjeffe: It's not graphic proof of the inaccessibility of health care (although that is a problem in your country.)

Certainly one of the causes here is ill health but it's self inflicted: Americans are too fat. That's not a healthcare issue, that's a lifestyle issue.

How many bags of Sabor di Soledad Cheese Puffs do you think you can eat and remain healthy, after all?

I'm not a saint by any means, but I'm certainly not going to blame private health care for the fattening of the American waistline.

@Palliard: Love Feynman, but sorry...there's an obvious answer to that question: the leading cause of death should be old age. Nothing wrong with that one.

@Maddrjeffe: "So the real question is, what is this country going to do to fix it?"

You're kidding, right? The government does not mandate 60 hour work weeks and fatty diets. The government could do more, but let's be honest here, it comes down to what you are going to do to keep yourself healthy, not how is the government going to save my ass. Good diet and regular excercise are, in the long run, more effective than drugs.
The pattern that those maps show is more indicative of cultural differences, not political or religious differences (or even wealth distribution). There are religious adherents all over the country. [www.valpo.edu] However, as a previous commenter pointed out, in the South things like "going green" and "eating healthy" have not yet gained widespread acceptance. Couple that with, yes, a lack of adequate public transportation which leads to long commute times/added stress/pollution, as well as a lack of excercise/outdoors activity, and you have a perfect storm of unhealthiness. It has nothing to do with what the government is/isn't doing or what people do/don't believe (unless you believe eating cheeseburgers is the path to enlightenment. In that case, you're screwed).

@darcymcgee: Damn it, you beat me to it.

I find it strange that NY's Erie county and Chautauqua county are doing so well. Erie county, home to Buffalo NY is the second poorest cities in America.

The people are not as religious as those in the "Bible Belt" but still most ascribe to one type of faith or another.

Buffalo NY, has a reasonably large murder problem for its ever shrinking size.

The only thing I can say it has going for it is some programs for helping the poor with health care. But then the more rural areas in the middle of the state have that same benefit but are still having problems.

I'm confused.

@Castle1914: And riddle me this: what the hell is going on in Maine?!

@quick: While I agree that yes, personal responsibility and making good diet/excercise choices is ultimately the problem here, there are always underlying policy changes that can effect change. I'm hardly the authority on it but you touch on some yourself: availability of public transportation or something as simple as a marketing campaign to change attitudes toward healthful diets.

Another thing that is going on in the South is poor urban planning. There are no sidewalks anywhere but the old down town sections of cities. Neighborhoods are built as self-enclosed culdesacs barely big enough for a kid to ride a bike. Couple that with hot muggy weather and people are a lot more likely to sit inside in air conditioning, and it was air conditioning in the first place that led to the population boom in South. It's no surprise that diabetes is a big problem.

Is is not as bad as it seems...

The clear counties kept up with the "Increasing life span" and only the red counties failed to keep up with the increasing life span...

And before we get too far into socioeconomic issues.. the failure to keep up with increasing life expectancy is primarily due to "lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes"....

So Smoking, smoking and diabetes...
oh also "a slowdown or halt in the reduction of deaths from cardiovascular disease"...

So it is smoking, smoking, smoking, and diabetes...

I bet if they were able to isolated smokers from non smokers that would explain 75% of that decrease...

You know what else made an appearance in the early 80's? High fructose corn syrup as a cheap sweetener. And there is definitely a class issue involved, as cheap food is drowning in it.

As others have said, I expect you'll find that the people whose life expectancies are going down are choosing it - either by conscious decision to not try and live as long as possible, or by just making unhealthy choices and not thinking about it.

I agree about Big Pharma, but I think the government getting into the health insurance biz (more than it already is) would only make the Big Pharma situation even worse.
-Kle.

@