Funmurphys: the Blog

Mortality and Race

John Edwards liked to talk about 2 Americas while on the stump, but he was wrong according to the latest study of mortality in America. Wouldn't that be a great headline over the articles - "Edwards Lied"? OK, turns out there are eight Americas:
Asians, northland low-income rural whites, Middle America, low-income whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley, western Native Americans, black Middle America, southern low-income rural blacks, and high-risk urban blacks. Although looking at the numbers, they could have had sixteen Americas by dividing each group by gender. I guess they thought that was excessive. Or they could have just divided it between men and women and then Edwards would have been right.

Hmm, is there any link between life expectancy and test scores?

Interestingly, based on Figure 1. Alaska and the frozen north seem to have the highest life expectancies - maybe we should all move to the Arctic to maximize our life expectancy.

I like the Middle America category - its neither race nor geography based, it's basically the left overs from the other seven. Middle America sounds so much better than Leftovers, though. Or average White People, which is overwhelmingly what the category is.

According to Figure 3, the difference in life expectancy between Asians and the next group, Americans who sey eh, is much larger than between any other groups.

Would they have made a much bigger deal about the gender difference if it were women on the short end of the life expectency? Just curious.