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September 11, 2006
Life expectancy by county
There are a couple of things worth noting here. First of all, I was not aware of this open access medical journal, PLoS. I figure that a few of you might not know of it either, so now you know.
Anyway, I tracked it down from this story on MSNBC.com. The article is on the vast differences in life expectancies across geographical areas of the country. The authors then break down the data into "eight Americas" based on income and race. Hawaii scores well, but the south does very poorly. Of course one can easily criticize this as leaving out many potential other explanatory variables. For example, If industrial pollutants reduce life expectancy of all races but are concentrated in counties of a certain racial makeup, that would be useful to know. (I confess to having no knowledge of whether this would be a significant issue, but an enterprising person with a map of chemical factories could find out in a hurry.) The authors do identify access to health care, even among low-income rural areas of the northern states (e.g. my old stompin' grounds), as being an important positive factor contributing to life expectancy. Food for thought.
For the curious, their life expectancy data is available.
Other articles in this issue of the on-line journal look interesting as well, including a study comparing outcomes in academic medicine (i.e. teaching hospitals) and non-academic medicine.
I commend this journal for making medical studies more accessible to researchers, including those in other fields who will benefit from easy access.
Posted by William Polley at September 11, 2006 10:14 PM
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