For the purposes of a study, researchers at East Tennessee State University (United States) reorganized the 3,141 American counties into 50 new states classified according to the income of the population. Using county data, they said, gave a better reflection of poverty than data categorized by state. They calculated the median household income in each county, according to information from the American Community Survey of the US Census Bureau.
More wealth in California than in Louisiana
The wealthiest state had a median income for a family of four of $ 89,723 (€ 84,736). It included counties in Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio, from New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Tennessee and Texas.
In the state the poorest, the median income for a family of four was $ 24,960 (€ 23,572). The federal poverty line for a family of four is $ 24,250 (€ 22,902). The poorest state included counties of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee , Texas and West Virginia.
Rich men live 10 years longer than poor people
Men living in the poorest state had a life expectancy of 69.8 years against 79.3 years, or ten years more, for the richest. As to women, the rich lived to 83 years against 76 years for the poor.
“The state of the poverty in this country is dramatic and deeply disturbing “, explain the researchers in the study published in theAmerican Journal of Public Health. More than half of the world’s countries have longer life expectancies than the poorest counties in the United States.
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