Trends in male and female mortality rates from 1992–96 to 2002–06 in 3,140 US counties

[DeSwiss]

Women’s health and children’s health

April 3, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Austin Frakt

The following is a guest post from Bill Gardner, a psychologist who studies the mental health service system for children. Bill is an American living in Canada and a professor of pediatrics at Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia) and the Ohio State University. Bill blogs at Inequalities, and you can follow him on Twitter at @Bill_Gardner.

There is a frightening graph in a recent article in Health Affairs by David Kindig and Erika Cheng. Kindig and Cheng looked at trends in male and female mortality rates from 1992–96 to 2002–06 in 3,140 US counties. What they found was that female mortality rates increased in 42.8% of counties (male mortality rates increased in only 3.4%). The counties are mapped below: red means that female mortality worsened. You can see a strong regional pattern: just about every county showed had worsened female mortality in several southern states, while no county showed such decline in New England. There are many questions about what explains this pattern. For example, did healthier women migrate out of the south from 1992 to 2006? Nevertheless, the map depicts a shocking pattern of female hardship, primarily in the southeast and midwest.

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When I look at the graph, however, I am concerned not just about the women, but also about their children. The mental and physical health of mothers is a key determinant in children’s growth and development. What the map shows is that America has regions of communities with high concentrations of women experiencing substantial hardship. When women are not able to maintain their own health, how well can they nurture their children?

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[wickerwoman]

1. Now overlay that with a map showing access to abortion clinics.

[SunSeeker]

2. Yup. And the 2012 Electoral map, for that matter.

Being in a red state is bad for your health.

[Kalidurga]

3. Being in a conservative area...

Look at California, the southern more liberal half is blue the northern conservative 1/4 is red. I am in Minnesota so I can see right away the conservative areas are red and where I live in the Twin Cities is blue. I don't know what SW Texas is but, I wouldn't be surprised if that area is more liberal...

[SunSeeker]

4. You'd think with all the scandinavians up in MN they'd be more blue.

And yes, SW Texas is more liberal; that's where Austin and San Antonio are (think Castro brothers). At least you're in a blue area up there in the land of lakes. I've got in-laws up around Grand Rapids. It is a beautiful area, with gorgeous lakes, bald eagles, quaint neighborhoods. However, everyone up there over the age of 18 seems to be obese, alcoholic and very conservative. But maybe that's just my in-laws. Be well, Kalidurga.

[raging moderate]

5. Yes! This is absolutely true!

I have worked in many school districts, the entire length of Illinois. Please, everybody, listen! There are many many women being overworked, all through Illinois, but yes, indeed, it is worse in Southern Illinois generally! The right-wingers MUST NOT be allowed to cut Social Security or raise the age. Many of these women have no fingernails left from hanging on until they reach age 65! They work from before daylight to long after dark, every day, long hours, difficult painstaking work, sometimes driving long distances to the jobs. The TV may be on, but they are not sitting there listening; they are working, comforted by the cheerful adult voices in the background.

Many of the men are also being overworked, forced to drive long distances to jobs, using ingenuity and painstaking work to keep their vehicles going, and long hours, backbreaking labor, on the job and in home repairs and yardwork, etc. If men are being stretched too far and worked too hard, then they can't help their women as they would like to do.

So more and more of the family work falls to the women, both childcare and eldercare. And repair work, and yard work. That includes raising vegetable gardens, where that is possible. Plus they all hold down full-time jobs, as much as possible.

And just to show you how really valuable and greathearted and worth saving these people are, they still respond to the rightwing propagandists' appeals to join a march, a fundraiser, a movement, or an army, supposedly to save unborn babies from abortion, and save little boys from molesters, and save third-world Christians from genocide, and save small business owners from overtaxation. Not for themselves, but for others they believe are being victimized. They are being lied to, and they have no time or energy left to investigate. Many of them are racists and bigots, but they have also been put through some difficult times, and they have been told lies about these other groups, and they don't know how to find the truth about them. They have been deceived and used and abused and exhausted, and they deserve better.


The current madness of our upper 1% MUST STOP! Everybody, tell them: "You have taken too much of the profit. give some of it back!"

[HiPointDem]

7. +1

[RainDog]

6. k&r n/t