Some Red State/Blue State Indicia

Unless Newsom/Bass/etc. diverted resources from water infrastructure and fire mitigation to public health initiatives which drove a positive state-vs-state health outcome divergence vs 1980, I fail to see how the latter is relevant to the discussion of this week's front page news.
 
nsacpi said:
Plus there are rural blue states (hello Vermont) that have done quite well on basic health metrics such as life expectancy
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To be completely fair here, I can identify some pretty obvious and crucial differences between Vermont and Alabama when it comes to the ability to handle the burden of having health care accessible to rural residents. That’s not to say VT might not have good processes worth modeling as well, but it’s also much harder to be more than 45 minutes from medical care when you have so much less land.
 
acesfull86 said:
Unless Newsom/Bass/etc. diverted resources from water infrastructure and fire mitigation to public health initiatives which drove a positive state-vs-state health outcome divergence vs 1980, I fail to see how the latter is relevant to the discussion of this week's front page news.
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To be fair, I thought bringing up details that couldn’t have meaningfully contributed to the results of these fires in any way was the primary thing driving the discourse around these fires.
 
chop2chip said:
Life expectancies is most strongly correlated with obesity rates.

Do we think obesity is driven more by government policy or culture?
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I actually don’t think you can really disentangle the two at this point. Government policy is bred from the culture and vice versa, and ours has collectively failed us on this front. Hell, propping up that culture through wildly different government policy is perhaps the most bipartisan thing American lawmakers do.
 
chop2chip said:
Life expectancies is most strongly correlated with obesity rates.

Do we think obesity is driven more by government policy or culture?
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Oh I think good public policy makes a difference for obesity. And for lung cancer. And for many many diseases. Culture plays a role to be sure. But culturally driven obesity is not the explanation for the changes in life expectancy differentials in blue vs red states since 1980.

The amusing thang about much of this discussion is the eagerness to find reasons for red state deficiences other than public policy. I offer an elegant solution: God just decided one day to give those damn Yankees 5 extra years of life and there's nothing to done about it. Moreover, in His infinte wisdom He has decided this differential in life expectancy should be gradually getting bigger and that it should be accompanied by a growing differential in educational attainment.

Btw in the 1970s lung cancer rates in those corner counties were the same regardless of whether they were in Ohio, Pennsylvania or New York. Something changed bigly (maybe God decided) since then.
 
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Yes. Yes it is.

You have a segment of the population that has taken the diet and exercise community to heart and a very large segment that has not

You are a smart boy I’ll let you figure out which is which and which lives where

Also- didn’t you decry obesity and COVID outcomes ?
 
I guess "culture" also explains why in a similar group of counties it mattered which state that county was in when it came to changes in lung cancer outcomes.
 
States and school districts in recent decades have enacted a large number of policies to address obesity. I suppose it could be argued that "culture" precludes certain states and school districts from enacting such policies. I'll buy that.
 
thethe said:
Can we normalize the counties for economic advantages or just ignore the obvious differentiator?
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The lung cancer study looked at that group of counties because they were similar. It is a way with observational data to try to control for confounding variables.
 
nsacpi said:
The lung cancer study looked at that group of counties because they were similar. It is a way with observational data to try to control for confounding variables.
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I'm not talking about your lung cancer point - The greater point of life expectancy will correlate more to economic advantages as opposed to geographical location.
 
thethe said:
I'm not talking about your lung cancer point - The greater point of life expectancy will correlate more to economic advantages as opposed to geographical location.
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Yes. It is true that having economic advantages lead to different policy choices. That's a perfectly good argument.

Otoh the interesting thing is that those economic advantages led to certain differentials in the 1970s. Something has happened since then to turbocharge the differentials. It is pretty likely that public policy itself is making a difference. Starting in the Reagan administration states were "liberated" to pursue a much wider set of practices because Congress started allocating more aid to states in the form of block grants with fewer strings attached. So we had more policy experimentation at the state level since 1980. This coincided with these increasing divergences in outcomes.

I don't think it is a bad thing that different states pursue different policies. It is a way of experimenting and learning what works best. As long as everyone has enough humility to be able to learn from others. So maybe Ohio should be looking at what New York is doing with respect to public health policy regarding tobacco. And Newsom can learn from DeSantis regarding how to safeguard his people from natural disasters.
 
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nsacpi said:
Yes. It is true that having economic advantages lead to different policy choices. That's a perfectly good argument.

Otoh the interesting thing is that those economic advantages led to certain differentials in the 1970s. Something has happened since then to turbocharge the differentials. It is pretty likely that public policy itself is making a difference. Starting in the Reagan administration states were "liberated" to pursue a much wider set of practices because Congress started allocating more aid to states in the form of block grants with fewer strings attached. So we had more policy experimentation at the state level since 1980. This coincided with these increasing divergences in outcomes.

I don't think it is a bad thing that different states pursue different policies. It is a way of experimenting and learning what works best. As long as everyone has enough humility to be able to learn from others.
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Yes something did happen since that time.

Services became more expensive and the gap between rich and poor grew.

So effectively the same reason for your 'divergences' in outcomes.
 
You know what else happened?

Our food supply has been poisoned and to buy food that isn't poisoned is expensive.
 
thethe said:
Yes something did happen since that time.

Services became more expensive and the gap between rich and poor grew.

So effectively the same reason for your 'divergences' in outcomes.
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A lot of gaps grew. As a society the income distribution became much more concentrated. Differentials across states in educational outcomes grew. State policies also diverged. It is a lot to disentangle.

One interesting thing is blue states saw life expectancy increase in ways similar to say Germany and Switzerland in recent decades. Red states not so much. I think that's an interesting outcome to ponder. Some say blue states and countries like Germany and Switzerland are "socialist." It is an interesting point. Maybe it is all culture or an act of God. But maybe policy matters too.

For a long time health outcomes converged across states. But for the last few decades they have been diverging. Maybe it is a coincidence that those decades were the same decades that states were "liberated" to pursue a wider range of policies.
 
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nsacpi said:
A lot of gaps grew. As a society the income distribution became much more concentrated. Differentials across states in educational outcomes grew. State policies also diverged. It is a lot to disentangle.

One interesting thing is blue states saw life expectancy increase in ways similar to say Germany and Switzerland in recent decades. Red states not so much. I think that's an interesting outcome to ponder. Some say blue states and countries like Germany and Switzerland are "socialist." It is an interesting point. Maybe it is all culture or an act of God. But maybe policy matters too.

For a long time health outcomes converged across states. But for the last few decades they have been diverging. Maybe it is a coincidence that those decades were the same decades that states were "liberated" to pursue a wider range of policies.
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Blue states are either wealthy or mostly white so draw your own conclusions.
 
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