I am sorry, I don't buy the "we are like several countries, you can't compare us to a single one !" argument. Japan is at 40% of USA population and its average life expectancy is on par with the highest county you can find in USA while their GDP per capita (PPP) is only 70% of the one in USA.<p>That shows a very inefficient use of USA's wealth and a very poor healthcare policy.<p>US states may be very different from each other, but their difference is far less that the ones between European states. You speak a single language, you have a single president, a federal senate, a federal army, a federal police, a powerful federal intelligence agency, and many institutions at the federal level. You have 200 years of common history as a single country, if we except the Secession period. Actually, I could understand that you could say that US is an union of two countries because of this episode, but a union of 50, no way.<p>Europe on the other hand is a territory that is divided in several countries with different languages, different religions, different history, several wars between them (the list is really really long). Being generous, you could say that we began a common history 50 years ago, but this was in fact only an economic union on a small set of goods (steel and coal IIRC) between 5 countries.<p>Apple to oranges, really.
This appears to be a reblog with a low-res version. The full interactive maps (in different forms) are the first three entries here: <a href="http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualizations" rel="nofollow">http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...</a>
Probably helpful to realize that the lifespan is determined more than just one metric, such as healthcare. Cultural differences between different regions likely plays a significant effect. For instance, my guess is diet leading to obesity helps to drag down life expectancy in the regions where the life expectancy is lower:<p><a href="http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jp...</a>
I think this is what you're after:<p><a href="http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore" rel="nofollow">http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...</a>
<i>"In Collier, Florida, women live 85.8 years on average. In McDowell, West Virginia, they live to be 74.1. That’s an 11.7-year gap"</i><p>I would guess most of that difference is due to migration of elderly persons to Florida, not due to Florida being healthier or health care being better there.
What the article doesn't seem to link is this: <a href="http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore" rel="nofollow">http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visuali...</a> , a nice visualisation.
Tobias wrapped up this fine post writing, the "gap [between developed and underdeveloped counties] will be, if it continues, a major fissure in a future America."<p>WILL be? It already is. It's pretty much in line with the so-called red / blue divide in the nation.
I love heat maps like this: they pack crucial information in an easily accessible format. However, they should always be scaled for population density, otherwise it's very misleading. Does the huge swathe of green in Alaska counterbalance the few red spots in Florida? Probably not!
The poor results on the map line up a fair bit with the cotton industry lines of the 19th century in this article <a href="http://bigthink.com/ideas/21383" rel="nofollow">http://bigthink.com/ideas/21383</a><p>Industry (dots) lined up with Obama voters from the article:
<a href="http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsoverlay1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsov...</a>
I remember one year, while out skiing in West Virginia, my wife fell and broke her arm. The ambulance ride to the <i>nearest</i> hospital was about 1.5 hrs through some of the poorest and most ramshackle areas I've seen outside of the middle east and it ended at one of the smallest hospitals I've ever seen in the U.S. She received good care, but I can see many health choices being made in rural areas because<p>a) Too poor<p>b) Too far<p>If a resident of that area can even get their hands on a car, a 3-4 hour round trip to visit the medical center (not counting time at the center) vs. putting in another day on the job would certainly give me pause.
Imagine if you live in a university town, but it just gets redistricted to include a neighboring industrial town. The life expectancy of your town just dropped, drastically.<p>But does that change your life at all? No, your life is exactly the same as before.<p>Same with these stats. Just because people who have lower life expectancies move or happen to live near you, it doesn't change anything about your life.<p>If canada and the US merged, the average life expectancy of the new country would go up, but that number itself wouldn't change anyone's life.<p>It's the same with arbitrary county groupings. If you live in a county with lots of poor people, they will have a lower life expectancy. That doesn't mean anything about you, though. If the border was different, you might live in a county with lots of rich people.
life expectancy at 80 is probably 5 years or so. So having a bunch of 80 year olds move to your county will probably increase it. Similarly, having successful, rich and long-lived people move out of your country at age 80, a few years before dying, will mean they don't increase your country life expectancy at all, despite the fact that they lived there for 80 years.
It would be interesting to see the spread in life expectancy in Canada or Armenia. It's easy to shorten your life, even in a rich country but not so easy to extend it so I would expect increasing asymmetry as you go up. These comparisons should be done with distributions.