"For poor Americans, the place they call home can be a matter of life or death."
In this article, it illustrates how important geographic location can be for some of the poorest Americans in the US. In areas such as New York and Los Angeles, the poor communities have shown to live as long as their middle class neighbors or have seen rising life expectancy rates in the 21st century. However, in areas where there is not a large city close by, life expectancy rates drop to a life expectancy rate comparable to countries like Rwanda and they are only continue to shorten.
Research in this article has shown that the right combination of improvements to habitats and public health could help people live longer regardless of the amount of money that they make. While this may seem like an oversimplification, improving public health and allowing for more educational and preventative care action this would allow the poor communities to work more and hold jobs for longer amounts of time, since they would be healthier. Medicare and insurance showed very little correlation in overall betterment of health, therefore it has been found that there is a much higher correlation with changing the behaviors that people exhibit in order to create a more healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, economic inequality and unemployment also both showed little correlation with overall life expectancy further suggesting the argument to focus on behavior factors. While income will always play a factor in life expectancy, it is safe to say that it can be tackled indirectly by improvements to public health allowing people to hold jobs longer and have a more steady income.
From this research it shows some of the ways in which life expectancy can be increased in areas, however it did not conclude how certain areas had achieved these higher numbers through various policy procedures while others have suffered. By uncovering these specific procedures it would help more rural areas to also improve life expectancy for the poorer communities making life a little better for these suffering communities.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/11/upshot/for-the-poor-geography-is-life-and-death.html?ref=business
i thought that this article was very interesting because i have never really thought about how where you live and how much money you make can effect life expediency. maybe this is do to if you make more money you are able to afford to go to the doctor when something is wrong and low income people don't have that luxury.
ReplyDeleteThis article definitely makes sense. The relativity of poverty is different in different locations. I think it was interesting how on the map the lowest life expectancies were grouped in West Texas. My guess is that this is because of the lack of major cities in this area as well as the difficulty to have sustainable agriculture.
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