Hmmm...

Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S.?

Annie Lowrey writes in the Times Magazine this week about the troubles of Clay County, Ky., which by several measures is the hardest place in America to live.

The Upshot came to this conclusion by looking at six data points for each county in the United States: education (percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree), median household income, unemployment rate, disability rate, life expectancy and obesity. We then averaged each county’s relative rank in these categories to create an overall ranking.

(We tried to include other factors, including income mobility and measures of environmental quality, but we were not able to find data sets covering all counties in the United States.)

The 10 lowest counties in the country, by this ranking, include a cluster of six in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky (Breathitt, Clay, Jackson, Lee, Leslie and Magoffin), along with four others in various parts of the rural South: Humphreys County, Miss.; East Carroll Parish, La.; Jefferson County, Ga.; and Lee County, Ark.

Here in Fayette, we're in a little better state than the rest of the Commonwealth:



In the original article, if you roll over the map, it will bring up a box with the chosen county's statistics.

Quantity or quality? Which would you choose?

People are living longer worldwide but with more illness and disability

Life expectancy is increasing among the world’s population, including in the United States, but people are living longer in chronic pain and with physical and mental disabilities, according to findings from the giant Global Burden of Disease study, published Thursday in the journal Lancet.

Seven separate reports conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, the Harvard School of Public Health, and elsewhere gauged people’s health in 187 countries and determined that developing countries are looking more like richer Westernized countries in terms of the health problems that pose the biggest burden: high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.

The new estimates show that, globally, the average life expectancy of males born in 2010 is more than 11 years higher than those born in 1970 -- increasing from 56 years to nearly 68 years. Females born in 2010 had an increased life expectancy of 12 years and can expect to live to more than 73 years of age. Study funding came from the non-profit Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.