Taps Coogan- August 3rd, 2018
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In 2015, the average life expectancy for someone born in the US was 79.3 years, the 31st longest lifespan in the world. Since 2015, the average US life expectancy has fallen to 78.7 years amid increasing obesity rates and surging drug fatalities. It is the most significant decline in life expectancy in over 50 years.
Not only is the US life expectancy now declining, as the following chart reveals, life expectancy varies by over 20 years across the US. Based on the most recent county level data from 2014, the longest lifespan in the US is 86.8 years in Summit County, Colorado. At the other end of the spectrum, with a lifespan of just 66.8 years, someone born in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota has the shortest expectancy in the country. The life expectancy in Oglala Lakota County, and many other unfortunate counties in the US, is lower than throughout much of the third world and lower than in countries like Iraq, Nepal, and North Korea.
The shortest lifespans in the US are concentrated in areas where the obesity, substance abuse, and poverty rates are highest. In fact, Oglala Lakota County happens to be the poorest county in the incorporated US.
All of this is despite the fact that the US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country in the world.
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California looks pretty green. Must be all those crazy democrats doing wasteful things like protecting consumers and expanding healthcare access.
That must be the explanation for Kansas, Idaho, and Nebraska too. Be careful in California. I hear the coffee there causes cancer.
Just like you would think, most American counties enjoy a modern first world lifestyle, with above average life expectancy while a few indigent or impoverished counties behave more third world, existence lifestyles with poor health records, by fiat or by happenstance, left out of the miracle called the USA. Probably lots of good reasons why the poorest counties exist, but concentrated lack of education and opportunity, and poor nutrition guaranteed by government handouts spent on junk food, not community farming and efficient food production (but requires participation of the community for long term benefit), producing high rates of obesity, diabetes… Read more »