People living in the Southeastern United States die about a decade earlier on average than other Americans. At first glance, natural disasters don’t seem to explain it. Data even suggests that global disaster deaths are going down. But new research reveals a hidden toll that’s been overlooked for decades. And it uncovers what exactly is causing millions of “invisible deaths” in the Southeast.
Rachel Young and Solomon Hsiang Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07945-5
Life Expectancy Map: https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/life-expectancy-and-inequality
Images of 1931 Chinese Floods provided courtesy of the Missionary Society of St. Columban.
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The mortalities that can be traced to weather pale in comparison to poor diet and alcohol/tobacco abuse..A hurricane broke my house….so I ate and drank myself to death….causality??
A little surprised they didn't mention the Civil War.
with the next earthquake the west coast might catch up (… I am actually so worried for those living on the beautiful west coast. hope it never happens in foreseeable time)
Bad diets, bad education, bad healthcare, bad lifestyles, what else is there to know.
the confederate south is the fattest, least educated, most anti science part of the country. is it really shocking they die earlier?
I'm surprised how many live as long as they do. Look at what they are. Ever talk to one?
Seems Iike their primary assumption is false. The growing increase in deaths has nothing to do with weather.
Perhaps look at retirement age across the south. Older people.
What a good piece of current climate science reporting here! This 2024 study's "Fourier transform" style decomposition of overlapping direct and indirect effects delivers some truly ground-breaking insights here. And, more granular breakdowns of this same data set should yield even more, I would think, now that they've got the technique down pat.
My only question, in ferreting out the factors contributing to differential longevity across US regions: shouldn't one of the regression variables in this analysis be income or wealth?
Interesting! I live in a place that gets A LOT of tropical storms and hurricanes (N.W. Caribbean). We usually get a bunch of them, but this year we didn't get even one. So strange. I do fear for our reef, the second largest on the planet. But I'm pretty sure the average life expectancy here is on par with the average in the US, even though we have all experienced MANY storms. It's such a normal thing, like a blizzard in Boston. Sucks, but it's expected, so you deal with it. Also, as you see the immediate deaths go down, you see the long-term deaths go up. That's probably because more survived the storm. Kinda like soldier deaths in combat have gone down, but more die after combat.