This is really interesting. If I am ever able to afford to build on my property, my life expectancy jumps 5 years. Crazy.

What interests me about wealth and health is that we see the relationship even in coutries with universal access to healthcare. So many of our behaviors and expectations are linked to our socio economic status that it causes huge disparities.

Where I live everyone expects people in the 70s to be fit and active. In the town which neighbors mine, people begin to decline in their 40 due to obesity and inactivity.

I have participated in one simple intervention, helping people learn to cook basic, wholesome food, and watched pretty amazing progress as a result.

The expectations and habits of the people you are surrounded by are contagious.

The property I mentioned above is in the same state, but in a mountain community above the valley I live in now. I live in the suburbs of a city and because we essentially live in a bowl (surrounded on all sides by mountains), or air quality can get pretty bad. Comparatively the air qualilty around my property is typically better. Additionally, it is a higher cost of living there (so presumably higher income?).

@Zalco/bring back Sophie! does the neighboring community have access to healthy foods? I've heard that food deserts in poor areas can be a serious problem for health. That sometimes communities have little to no access to fresh vegetables and fruit.

Pricklypear, access to fresh fruits and vegetables is lovely, though absolutely not necessary for a healthy diet. Frozen fruits and vegetables are excellent substitutes, which have served people well for decades.

That said there is an amazing large supermarket in that community with excellent prices on fresh produce, excellent compared to regular supermarkets, like Safeway, which is the default in that area. The market is one many non poor visit due to its quality and value and unique offerings.

This concept that in order to eat properly you have to eat the way the richest people eat is unhelpful. I wish everyone could eat like a king, but there are many options that produce excellent health without spending a lot of money.

Beans and rice plus frozen vegetables make excellent staple foods. They are easy to prepare in bulk and cheap. My kiddos live on brown rice and beans during the school year for lunches because one of our favorite restaurants taught them to love that combo and I encourage it due to the healthy profile of the meal.

Cheap cuts of meat used in soups filled with frozen veggies and beans and potatoes or rice or pasta are good.

Eggs and potatoes, eggs and rice, all good choices for filling and nutritious meals, also quickly prepared if you have the starch bit ready in advance.

Living in Northern California, there are a lot of options for people to receive cheap to free produce from our farmers as well.

Just like with rich people being told cooking is time consuming and not worth the effort, poor people being told they must eat a diet just like mine or be consigned to poor health is a terrible disservice.

My husband is English and it seems to us those who can afford private Heath insurance or work for american companies offering it alway use private over the NHS because in order to serve the greater good and be cost effective universal coverage needs to cut out alot of things private includes like coloscopies for all over 45 or mamograms before 48 or even yearly wellness visits for children over two. This is only one reason why wealth equates to longevity. Food, stress, air quality and education are other huge components.

PS When considering cost effective menu planning, never forget the importance of tinned salmon, and sardines. Those fish oils are super healthy, totally great for developping brains (the old wives tale turned out to be true) and tasty. Children should not be fed tuna often as it contains too much mercury from the ocean by virtue if it being such a large, thus old fish.

Is there a link to the chart?

Longevity is not so much a factor of healthy food as it is health care. You live longer if you have insurance and access to care in a timely manner when you need it. Better off people have insurance.

Oddly enough I was reading a study just a couple of days ago that was tracking deaths and there is a big disparity in death rates in counties based on of all thing your political position. It surprised the people doing the study. Very conservative areas have higher death rates, as much as 33% higher than very liberal areas though even they thought it might have something to do with your income bracket.

I used this site for life expectancy by zip code. I did not see a link here otherwise.

According to this site, I will live two years longer in Los Angeles than in Palm Springs/Cathedral City. I do think that health care is better in L.A., and I am still seeing doctors there instead of in Palm Springs.

Zalco, your points were also a part of a recent podcast on NPR's Life Kit. Here's the transcript:

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/920807670

I still love my farmer's market and do not have financial constraints, but I'm opposed to food waste. I plan very carefully and rarely through away food.

Interesting tool! I'll bet it has a lot to do with having a walking lifestyle vs a driving lifestyle. Every time I leave the city, especially to visit what I call The Fatlands, where I grew up, I'm shocked to see what a lot of my former schoolmates look like. Even visiting starts to make me sluggish. Drive to a restaurant. Eat. Get in the car and drive back home. True, if you make an effort you can exercise. But if you live in a place where exercise is built into the lifestyle, it's so much easier to stay fit. BTW, my current zipcode gives me over 7 years higher life expectancy than where I grew up.

That's so very true in my case, Jupidupi. I live in a very walkable community and have many services nearby to which I walk. (Even my dentist is down the street.) In addition, I have friends who are active and healthy, and this makes such a difference in my life.

Thanks for the link, Lars. That's very interesting. I was surprised my address in Michigan gave me a couple of years longer than my address here in Wa state.

Well, it seems like I only have about 16 years and 10 months to go. I put in my parents' old address and it was a year less, it's in Northern NV and I'm in Central KY. I thought it would be higher there.

I am almost 54 and my zipcode gets me to almost 85.

Looking at my neighbors, I think the number should be climbing. Many are well into their 80s and thriving. Just this week the editor of our local paper called our town, An open air nursing home 🤣.

Zalco I didn't mean offense or mean to suggest that frozen fruit and vegetables are unhealthy. I eat frozen fruits and vegetables too, along with a lot of beans and lentils. I was simply trying to ask if access was a problem in the community. I am privileged to have a car and live in a place where the grocery stores are stocked with plentiful produce, frozen vegetables, dairy, meat, etc. Until I learned otherwise, I just assumed everyone else had similar access to food. To me it was eye opening to understand that for some, the local stores don't carry as much healthy options and may only have the option to eat processed shelf-stable food, regardless of what the customers want want to buy. I was not intending to make a judgement on what is or is not a healthy diet or suggest that anyone has to eat like me.

@patriciae_gw that's a great point about health care. In the USA, people often delay accessing healthcare due to financial concerns (income and insurance) and that can have a serious impact on health.

Prickly, I am sorry for giving you the impression I took offense. I did not. The narrative about lack of access to food bothers me because it is disempowering to people I care about. Of course it would be better if we all had cars (walkable cities are better, but you kniw what I mean here) , and fresh produce, but people must know they can eat in a way that will not cost them their lives even without those things. Diabetes, heart disease, joint pain, these things all cost money and time to treat. One way or another, people will pay. Paying earlier offers much better terms.

Healthy lifestyle practices (and all that can encompass) greatly affect life expectancy. There is an educational attainment and socio-economic status correlation, the higher each is, the more likely the individuals follow patterns of eating, exercise, and health practices that can lead to longer lifetimes. And the lower, the less likely. Zip codes reflect where people live and there is a degree of homogeneity of these types in neighborhoods. I think that's what drives the underlying stats.

Oh that's unpleasant....it says I've only got 16 more years to go, and yet I still think of myself as middle aged. :(

Hmm, in my area code I’ve got 82 but if I move to my beach house I only get 81.5. Probably because I have more ice cream and cocktails when I’m there. 😜

There are also charts for people who have already lived to X years. Once you make it to 75, for instance, you have a greater chance of living longer than 'the average bear'. It's one reason we dropped long term care insurance years ago. Our 'actuarial group' tends to need only a few months of skilled nursing care. (Knock wood!)

The women-folks in my family live ridiculously long lives. So we have to plan way beyond these charts. I don’t know if it’s because they are healthy or stubborn. My grandmother’s generation lived under various degress of middle to lower class status, and some were quite poor. But that was in the age of non-processed food and hard physical work.

Only 11.3 years to go; I’d better get busy! PS: I’m in denial.

No way, china!

Based on the calculator associated with the Social Security website, I’ll make it to 86-88. That calculator factors in current age. Lars’ link doesn’t factor in current age — only zip code. It gives me until 78.5. I live in a fairly diverse zip code that probably skews more working class. If I put in an address at the more exclusive zip code that starts a block north of me, I’ll make it to 81.2.

SS calculator

Oh yay, thanks for those bonus years, jakabedy!! I’ve got until 87-88 according to Social Security, as compared to 82.8 by my zip code. Also the zip code one doesn’t factor in gender.
And Zalco, I can’t explain how it happened, but somehow I’m this old…

Ah yes Soc Sec gives me almost 20 years. Yay!!

But who knows? Mom's parents made it to 98 and 99, but she and her siblings died in their 80s.

DH's paternal Grandmother made it to 106, but her sons died in their 80s.

I remember a lecture by a gerontologist awhile back who showed data that there were a lot of people who died by 85, but if you made it past 85, your odds of living to 90 were much improved. No idea, but apparently a lot of things can get you between 80-85.

Where you live has a huge impact on health and, therefor, life expectancy.

This is pretty well known in people who work in health. in some cities there can be a 20+ year discrepancy. I have a colleague at Johns Hopkins who teaches a class themed around genetic code or ZIP code and someone who does something similar.

Our ZIP code overall is considered a high SES area. Our county is described as the ”crescent and the wedge” if you think of a circle. There is a small wedge where it is higher SES and the crescent where there can be very wide disparities. One example, we rank near the bottom for access to parks, within 10 min of a park. Most of our parks and greenways are in high SES areas.

I have no idea what SES means.

Socioeconomic status.

Many people move every 6 or 7 years or so. It might be interesting to do a study about the impact of zip codes throughout one life.

My father (for instance) started life in very poor circumstances but as a result of education and hard work became relatively affluent and lived into his early 90s. So I wonder if the zip code difference is mostly for adults, or what are the most important zip code years?

From studies I've seen many years back, it matters most when you're in utero and when you're very young. How much nutrition you receive in those years has a huge impact in how well the body ages. IIRC, they had studied the bones of civil war soldiers who were so small and even in their 20s suffered arthritis and other ills we associate with old age. They also looked at people born during the 1918 pandemic where food insecurity was an issue and found that they suffered more frequent health consequences that cohorts before and after did not.

Based on my address I should live 9 years longer than the US average.

Stats like this are an example of correlation without causation

"Stats like this are an example of correlation without causation"

There's too little information to know if it's correlation of causation -- you'd have to know how those stats were derived in the first place.

My grandfather lived to 104. He was overweight from middle age on. He began getting much thinner in his 80s. He just wasn't enjoying or eating as much food as he used to. My dad is pushing 90. He was also overweight from middle age on. He is now quite thin. Again, his appetite waned as he aged and became less active.

Losing weight as one gets older due to eating less makes sense to me. My dear friend who is 97 has essentially no sense of smell left. My DH also has little sense of smell. (I've been trying to use essential oils on him to see if that will help him regain it, but so far, nothing. Apparently they have had a lot of success with people who've lost their sense of smell due to covid.) And smell is such an essential part of taste that I see that food gets increasingly boring as one loses their sense of smell. And of course as one becomes increasingly less active, they lose a lot of muscle mass.

It's not just about healthy eating or exercise -- geography affect life expectancy in other ways......It's also about environmental factors, such as air and water quality, and area availabilities, like access to preventative care and treatment options.

According to Lars' link, I died just over 3 years ago. Interesting.

If there were causation, everything else being equal, that suggests that moving if even within a city from a zip code with lower life expectancies to one with higher ones, or vice versa, would affect someone's expected mortality. Of course that isn't the case.

Most zip codes are not regions or point specific places. You could move from a home with monitored, tested and processed municipal water to one with a polluted well and see a decline in health while staying in the same zip code.

Based on my birthday alone they say I will live to 88. Horse feathers!

The ss site gave me another 10 years. That's about all I want, to be honest. If things get worse in this country/world, I'd be okay with leaving it a lot sooner.

"that suggests that moving if even within a city from a zip code with lower life expectancies to one with higher ones, or vice versa, would affect someone's expected mortality. Of course that isn't the case."

How do you know? On a statistical level, it seem to me like it could very possibly be true.

TV are you suggesting my neighbor's housekeeper, who is in the country without access to medical care, little money and education will live as long as my neighbor, based on inhabiting the same zipcode?

"so what the heck does this mean or imply?"

It means you have prejudiced views about overweight people.

"TV are you suggesting my neighbor's housekeeper, who is in the country without access to medical care, little money and education will live as long as my neighbor, based on inhabiting the same zipcode?"

No, I'm suggesting that statistically it's a truth. Your neighbour (or their housekeeper) may or may not be an outlier in that 2.5% who don't follow the statistical pattern. One size never fits all, and that goes for life expectancy statistics too.

I'm thinking if you live in a zip code with little health care, poor education, high crime, etc. and subsequently have poor health, moving after a lifetime of poverty during your last years to a better zip code may not necessarily bring more years (although moving to an area with plentiful, available, affordable health care is a plus).

On the other hand, if you do like my father did and live early years in poverty and move to a better zip code while you are young, you may reap benefits and he did, living into his early 90s.

This zip code concept may be changing, what with free breakfast/lunch programs, free vaccinations, free or inexpensive health programs for children in some poorer areas. I certainly hope funding for such programs, and educational programs, continues, and that runaway inflation does not strangle opportunity for those living in desperate circumstances.

A comment I made seems to have be pulled so I'll try it differently. In response to my saying:

"that suggests that moving if even within a city from a zip code with lower life expectancies to one with higher ones, or vice versa, would affect someone's expected mortality. Of course that isn't the case."

To which there was a reply

"How do you know? On a statistical level, it seem to me like it could very possibly be true."

How I know is simple common sense.

"that suggests that moving if even within a city from a zip code with lower life expectancies to one with higher ones, or vice versa, would affect someone's expected mortality. Of course that isn't the case."

I am thinking that a child living in poverty, in the drug and crime infested projects who moved to an area in the city that was safer, had more opportunity for education, etc. would improve that person's expected mortality?

How I know is simple common sense.

That seems unneccesarily adversarial, because my thoughts/opinions are different from yours on this issue and I feel that I have just a little common sense. In any case, I'd like you to expand on what you have said, perhaps I misunderstood.

Read Zalco's comment just above.