Study: Geography Matters for Life Expectancy of Low Income Residents

"For poor Americans, the place they call home can be a matter of life or death," according to a post by Neil Irwin and Quoctrung Bui. The article reports data from new research by the Health Inequality Project, released this week.

The conclusions of the study are sweeping and consequential for anyone working to shape the future of cities and towns. As Irwin and Bui write, "The right mix of steps to improve habits and public health could help people live longer, regardless of how much money they make." A further implication of that conclusion is that local solutions—rather than the "broader, multidecade problem of income inequality"—can improve public health outcomes. Raj Chetty, the study’s lead author, is quoted in the article: "You don’t want to just think about why things are going badly for the poor in America. You want to think specifically about why they’re going poorly in Tulsa and Detroit…"

The article provides in-depth coverage of the study, its implications, and also includes a lot of infographics to illustrate the findings of the study.