People in high-income areas tend to live longer than those in low-income areas. While that's not so surprising, the resulting difference in lifespans within the US might be: In some counties, people live to about age 87, while in others the figure is only 67, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. What's more, the study's authors say this gap is only increasing. Here's a look at the coverage:
- See an interactive map of the health data here.
- The county with the shortest life expectancy is Oglala Lakota County in South Dakota at 66.8 years, while the longest is Summit County in Colorado at 86.8 years. Newsweek breaks out the best and worst.
- More generally, eight of the 10 counties where life expectancy has dropped the most since 1980 are in Kentucky, with the other two in Oklahoma and Alabama, per the Washington Post. Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and areas with Native American populations in the Dakotas (such as Oglala Lakota) were especially hard hit.
- On the flip side, remote areas in Alaska's Aleutians Islands showed the biggest improvement—from 70.7 years in 1980 to 83.7 in 2014—while Manhattan (New York County) and Brooklyn (Kings County), and San Francisco also fared well.