What Did You Expect?

 U.S. Cities With the Lowest Life Expectancy – May 2021

While thinking about the U.S., the bourgeois media describes politics in ‘red state/blue state’ terms, like some simple Dr. Seuss story.  Others have seen beyond this to see it is ‘rural/urban’ terms, with suburbs splitting either way.  Usually the closer-in suburb is more ‘progressive,’ the exurb less.  Another way to see what is happening is regionally – the South and prairie or mountain areas are many times the most right-wing, dominated by hard-right Republicans who are either business owners, ranchers and farmers or evangelicals.  All of these actually combine.  None of this looks at class, but underneath there are class ramifications.  Actual proletarian areas lean left.

A recent You Tube video asked the question “What U.S. cities have the lowest life expectancy?”  The U.S. average life expectancy dropped 1.5 years in 2020.  Prior to Covid, life expectancy was dropping in the U.S. due to ‘deaths of despair’ – suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol deaths. In the world, average female life expectancy is now 75+ years, while average male life expectancy is almost 71.  In the world the U.S. ranks 46^th.  That’s right.  According to the recent drop, the U.S. average is now 78.5 years.  Many of the countries above the U.S. are in the 80s, with Hong Kong at 85.29, the top. Hong Kong is not a real ‘country,’ but number two on the list is Japan, a real country.

DYING EARLY

So what U.S. cities are the worst, and does this say something about regional and rural issues?  This is a somewhat shallow list related to ‘reasons’, as the reasons listed are mostly ‘blame the victim’ types.  But they are still indicators of a certain kind.  Factors like working conditions, unemployment, lack of unions, education and environmental racism are not included as reasons, but they are operative.  Poverty is also mentioned less than it should be.  Notice the prominence of ‘lack of health care.’  The privatized and optional U.S. health care system is indirectly killing millions every year.

#10.  Rocky Mount, North Carolina – 74.6 due to obesity, lack of health care and smoking.

#9.  Alexandria, Louisiana – 74.6 due to obesity, smoking, little exercise and lack of health care.

#8.  Florence, South Carolina – 74.1 due to obesity, smoking and lack of exercise.

#7.  Springfield, Ohio – 73.8 due to obesity, smoking, lack of health care.

#6.  Huntington/Ashland- Kentucky/Ohio – 73.6 due to obesity, smoking, less exercise and lack of health care. 

#5.  Pine Bluff, Arkansas – 73.6 due to crime, obesity, smoking, poverty, less exercise.

#4.  Charleston, West Virginia – 73.3 due to smoking, poverty, obesity, lack of exercise and lack of health care.

#3.  Anniston, Alabama – 73.00 due to crime, poverty, obesity (40%), smoking and lack of health insurance.  This is one obvious example of environmental racism, as Anniston sits on a toxic waste area.

#2.  Gadsen, Alabama – 73.00 due to crime, obesity, smoking, lack of exercise and lack of health insurance.

#1.  Beckley, West Virginia – 72.9 due to obesity (40%), smoking, lack of exercise and lack of health insurance. 

(Source – World According to Briggs - 5/21)

So if you are following the numbers, if 78.5 is now the national average, in Beckley residents will die on average 5.6 years earlier than the national average. That is a large gap.  National averages are not specified by class, but working-class people are dying at much younger ages than the average – something that is behind all these figures.  At one point a number of years ago, only half of African-Americans were reaching retirement (62-65), which tells you something. The gap for men in 2016 was 15 years between the poorest male workers and the wealthy.  It has probably grown by now.

Mississippi State Capitol flag changed 1/21

POVERTY

Regarding ‘official’ poverty levels, here are the 10 poorest states presently, based on same You Tube site.  You’ll notice the connection with life expectancy.  Nationally, Maryland is the wealthiest state, with New Hampshire having the smallest number of poor at 7.19%. 

10.  Georgia – 14.11%

9.   Tennessee – 14.36%

8.   Oklahoma - 15%

7.   Alabama – 16.13% (Anniston, AL, from top list, has an unemployment rate 75% higher than the national average.)

6.   Arkansas – 16.36%

5.   Kentucky – 16.67%

4.   West Virginia – 17.54%

3.   New Mexico – 18.63%

2.   Louisiana – 18.83%

1.   Mississippi – 19.75%

The poverty of Appalachia is still existing - even though one of the 'targets' of the 'War on Poverty' in the 1960s was Appalachia.  Of the 10 lowest-income counties in the U.S, 3 are in Georgia, 2 in South Dakota (probably indigenous reservations) and 1 each in Florida, Kentucky, Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania based on 2019 figures.  Again, the South and rural areas figure prominently.   

If you look at the first locations, they are nearly ALL in the South or close to the South.  Springfield, Ohio is the only outlier.  They are also smaller, rural cities. The second list almost matches them.  There is no ethnic coding, but some of these cities are mostly African-American. So unless you aren’t paying attention to actual metrics, you will notice that the South – mostly dominated by reactionary Republicans backed by some large capitalist corporations – have the worst statistics.  But we can't forget Jim Machin, Democrat of West Virginia or the Democratic governors of Kentucky, New Mexico and Louisiana. It is an inheritance of slavery, Jim Crow, white supremacy and upper-class control.  God seems to have abandoned some parts of these areas.  It is really rabid capitalism doing it’s thing.

Red Frog

July 23, 2021