Dr. James H. Gundlach
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pecanjim.bsky.social
Dr. James H. Gundlach
@pecanjim.bsky.social
4K followers 6.3K following 1.8K posts
Retired Sociology/Demography professor. I know the United States has an awfully high middle aged death rate. My goal is to explain it well enough to get people to fix it.
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pecanjim.bsky.social
Trump is going on about how things are bad enough in Cuba that it deserves to be invaded. Well life expectancy is a good measure of how well things are going. In the United States Hawaii has our longest life expectancy at 80.0. Our CIA's fact book has Cuba's at 80.1. 🧪💡☠️ #Canada #Population #Science
January 5, 2026 at 1:42 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is a color coded map of the United States that has each state large enough to have their rank in life expectancy if they were a country. See text for more information. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population
Life expectancy is simply the age by which half the people die. Our CIA World Fact Book has the United States ranked 49th. But, as you look at the rank our states would have if they were in the. table ranking the United States at 49th, Since none of the states are ranked that high, there is some kind of a problem. I think think the CIA just places the United States higher than our life expectancy fits in the ranking of countries because not being in the top 50 would be embarrassing. For the visually disabled, here is a table that is machine readable: ST life expectancy rank AL 145.5 AK 122 AZ 101.5 AR 145.5 CA 65 CO 77.5 CT 64 DC 109 DE 105.5 FL 85 GA 120.5 HI 58.5 ID 79 IL 89.5 IN 127 IA 85 KS 108 KY 148 LA 145.8 ME 104.5 MD 85.5 MA 61.5 MI 100 MN 65 MS 160 MO 130 MT 92.5 NE 80 NV 110 NH 74.5 NJ 63 NM 141.5 NY 63.5 NC 120.5 ND 85 OH 125 OK 145.9 OR 86.5 PA 92.5 RI 66.2 SC 131.5 SD 92.5 TN 145.8 TX 98 UT 68 VT 80 VA 89.5 WA 79 WV 164.5 WI 82.5 WY 100
December 31, 2025 at 8:39 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
My last post showed the 2023 single year age groups death rates in Republican and mixed party voting states as a percent of Democratic voting states. This. graph shows all three groups as a percent of Canada's. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Politics
Notice that the highest dots are right at 200 percent, Our younger adults in Republican voting states have death rates that are about twice as high as Canadians. Also notice that highest dots fall between ages 30 and 50, the middle of the middle aged. This is despite the fact that in the United States we pay very close to twice as much for health care as Canadians. The simple fact is that the more our health care is dominated by capitalism the less time living we get out of the money we spend for health care. The other fact is that the more a state votes for Republicans the higher their middle age death rates. I am re-posting the earlier graph that is a similar graph that compares mixed party and Republican voting states with Democrat voting states by single year age. One thing to remember is that this graph does not tell us these differences are due to the Democrats living. longer than Republicans or that the difference is due to how Democrats govern the health insurance industry. I think it is largely due to the last but at least some of the difference created by religious fundamentalist, especially Southern Baptist using prayer for health care. Here are the results from. a regression analysis predicting state deaths per 100,000 from percent Southern Baptist: r = 0.70 b = 9.18 a = 491.92 y' x=100% = 1409.77 I have looked at the relationship between state death rates and all. the other possible causes. I could think of and find data for and find the strongest predictor is percent who smoke cigarettes and percent Southern Baptist the second. Percent uninsured is the only other one that remain significant and it was the weakest of the three. In summary percent Southern Baptist is almost certainly a major cause of our high death rate. A major tool they use to do it is they offer their own health insurance to supports prayer as a major source of health carte. Note that the ages 0-19 are covered in this graph but are excluded from the other because of limitations in Canadian data.
December 30, 2025 at 4:05 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
here is a graph that shows the percent difference between the single year age death rates in mixed-party and Republican voting states between them and the Democratic voting states. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population
The general patterns in these data points is the Republican voting states consistently has higher death rates than the mixed party states and they generally have higher death rates than Democratic voting states. The dots are highest among the under age 20. After age 20 both lines go down to age 30 where the Republican voting states increase some to age 50 after which the steady decline to about 120 percent of Democrats to age 84. The mixed party states have a line of dots that bounce around 120% all the way to the end. I averaged the percent for Republican voting states aged 20 and under and. got a 149.95, a number that rounds to 50% higher. Think about it, in the United States state politics have substantial effects on death rates and I have seen nothing that tells people who are looking to move. As a demographer I cannot help but think the fact this kind of differences in death rates makes it logical that people moving and expecting to raise children should consider it. In mixed party states they experienced 796,154 under age 85 deaths and if they died at Democratic states death rate that would have been 681,718, They would have prevented about 114,436 deaths. In Republican voting states there were 927,382 under age 85 deaths, at Democratic state rates that would have been 796,154. That is 131,228 or 16.5 percent fewer. As I have done this over several years I have found the mixed party States have been steadily moving closer to the Republican voting states while the Democratic voting states have only shown a very small portion of that same trend. Here are the states in each of the three categories I put the states in for the above calculations. Dem Mix Rep CA AZ AL CO GA AK CT IA AR DE MI FL DC MN ID HI NH IN IL NC KS ME OH KY MD PA LA MA TX MS NV WI MO NJ MT NM NE NY ND OR OK RI SC VT SD VA TN WA UT WV WY
December 26, 2025 at 10:54 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is an unusual scatter plot. It shows the relationship between smoking cigarettes and suffering arthritis by using data for all our counties. Enjoy.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #population
Here is a scatter plot with 3,142 dots, one for every county in the United States. There have been several other studies that have a relationship between cigarette smoking and arthritis. But most of them have been small sample studies. The fact is I accidentally downloaded the data set with this data and just to try it out I went ahead and crated this scatter plot. I have several studies showing this effect exists but these statistics from all the United State counties amazes me and I thought it might be enough to get more people to quit. Here are the basic statistics with brief interpretations: r square = 0.79. 79% of variation, sum of errors in predicting squared, explained r =0.89 Knowing smoking reduces errors in predicting arthritis by 89%. b =0.68 A one percent increase in a population increases percent with arthritis by -.68%. a = -4.06 Now the impossible, the predicted arthritis rate for the county with zero percent smokers is a -4.06%. This prediction is based on using a straight line all the way through the data. I may be hallucinating but it looks to me like the best fit of a curve-able line would be a little up as it moved more and more to zero percent smoking. Feel free to argue with me. If you want a copy of the data, email me at pecanjim@bellsouth.net The data set goes to column DM with three columns per variable so there are about 40 variables. Oh: Happy New Year
December 25, 2025 at 5:51 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is a start on the problem state, West Virginia. To start I ranked all the United States 3,142 counties but only display West Virginia's counties with where the fell in the total ranking.🧪💡☠️ #Population #Sociology
I built a data set of all 3,142 counties and had. my little old computer. rank. them by the 2023 deaths per 100,000 from lowest to highest. Then I labeled a new column and called it rank and typed a "1" in the first data line and then (=rank(2)+1 in the third and copied the third and pasted it into lines 4 through 3142, That produced the number you see in West Virginia's counties and the table below. County r year->CDR Preston 0.88 Barbour 0.05 Berkeley 0.24 Boone 0.83 Braxton 0.16 Brooke 0.69 Cabell 0.47 Calhoun 0.54 Clay 0.68 Doddridge -0.7 Fayette 0.72 Gilmer 0 Grant -0.08 Greenbrier 0.84 Hampshire -0.38 Hancock 0.73 Hardy -0.28 Harrison 0.75 Jackson 0.61 Jefferson -0.53 Kanawha 0.58 Lewis 0.7 Lincoln 0.88 Marion -0.17 Marshall 0.77 Mason 0.34 McDowell 0.83 Mercer 0.87 Mineral 0.43 Mingo 0.87 Monongalia -0.74 Monroe 0.85 Morgan 0.66 Nicholas 0.2 Ohio 0.77 Pendleton 0.59 Pleasants -0.01 Pocahontas 0.49 Putnam -0.14 Raleigh 0.66 Randolph -0.05 Ritchie 0.68 Roane 0.52 Summers 0.27 Tucker 0.5 Tyler 0.35 Upshur 0.28 Wayne 0.63 Webster 0.73 Wetzel 0.88 Wirt -0.21 Wood 0.7 Wyoming 0.72 A reminder: I am exploring West Virginia's mortality data to see if I can find the cause of their uniquely high death rates. I am not being a traditional researcher and just showing the steps in what I know caused their abnormally high death rates, I am showing this as I do it, I don't know what I will find. These two graphs show data that provide the groundwork for exploration. Here are the county names with the r's I showed under the first graph but this is. sorted with the. strongest positive r on top and strongest negative on the bottom: County r year->CDR Preston 0.88 Lincoln 0.88 Wetzel 0.88 Mercer 0.87 Mingo 0.87 Monroe 0.85 Greenbrier 0.84 McDowell 0.83 Boone 0.83 Ohio 0.77 Marshall 0.77 Harrison 0.75 Webster 0.73 Hancock 0.73 Fayette 0.72 Wyoming 0.72 Wood 0.70 Lewis 0.70 Brooke 0.69 Ritchie 0.68 Clay 0.68 Morgan 0.66 Raleigh 0.66 Wayne 0.63 Jackson 0.61 Pendleton 0.59 Kanawha 0.58 Calhoun 0.54 Roane 0.52 Tucker 0.50 Pocahontas 0.49 Cabell 0.47 Mineral 0.43 Tyler 0.35 Mason 0.34 Upshur 0.28 Summers 0.27 Berkeley 0.24 Nicholas 0.20 Braxton 0.16 Barbour 0.05 Gilmer 0.00 Pleasants -0.01 Randolph -0.05 Grant -0.08 Putnam -0.14 Marion -0.17 Wirt -0.21 Hardy -0.28 Hampshire -0.38 Jefferson -0.53 Doddridge -0.70 Monongalia -0.74
December 24, 2025 at 12:02 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
This graph shows changes in age 20-64 non-Hispanic white death rates for states grouped by party the state generally votes for from 1999 through 2023. See text for more information. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Politics #News
This is a.graph that is very much like earlier ones I have posted. The major change is that this one includes data for 2023 or. was for all races, the last similar one ended with data for 2022. The major change at the end is that all three of the dots are back on line with the pre-COVID years that show the party gap is increasing. The Republican voting states have a little higher death rate than the line of red dots from 1999 through 2019 shows. The mixed party states shows a similar effect while starting equal to Democratic voting states the last dot is about a third of the way up to the Republican dot for 2023. Then the blue, Democratic, line of dots shows some more of an increase, it is not as much as the other two groups of states. In general the graph shows. that while the. middle aged has had. increasing. death rates in the United States since 1999 the increases are strongest in. Republican voting states, second in mixed-party voting states. and smallest in Democratic voting states. Here are the states by my grouping by party: Dem Mix Rep CA AZ AL CO GA AK CT IA AR DE MI FL DC MN ID HI NH IN IL NC KS ME OH KY MD PA LA MA TX MS NV WI MO NJ MT NM NE NY ND OR OK RI SC VT SD VA TN WA UT WV WY
December 22, 2025 at 12:46 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Percent Southern Baptist in state populations is hard to measure. The one measure produced in 1980,1990,2000,2010, and 2020 are all correlated at 0.99 or higher and only show even declines. Here I try another way. 🧪💡☠️ #Population #Sociology
The top line of dots shows the yearly correlation between the new measure I created by counting the on line Yellow Pages listings at YellowPages.com. I started by putting in a search for "Southern Baptist Church" and "AL" for Alabama. At the bottom of the first page of output it told me it was showing 1-30 of 2930. I put the 2930 in a spreadsheet with population and divided that number by Alabama's population divided by 100,000 and entered the AL in one Column and the calculated 57.67 in the next. I told myself that it looked like it was working and went ahead and did the same for all 50 states in less than an hour. I then pasted this data next to all 50 states for each year from 1999 through 2023 and calculated correlations for both measures for each state's death rate and measure of Southern Baptism. Even though the count of Southern Baptist churches is current and the measure of death rate is repeated for data from each year. All the correlations between state age 20-64 death rates and number of Southern Baptist. per 100,000 people in the state resulted in correlations, r's, between 0.81 and 0.88. Here are two measures of State Southern Baptist by state abbreviation. Bap %80 So Bapt r 30.36 57.67 4.25 12.14 4.08 3.57 21.99 51.60 1.66 5.59 2.3 7.15 0.15 6.41 0.72 10.95 11.55 13.27 25.17 27.20 1.38 5.44 0.96 7.23 2.31 14.17 1.66 18.93 0.36 15.25 3.1 22.89 24.26 61.82 15.51 55.71 0.07 13.68 3.05 18.51 0.05 5.14 0.59 14.91 0.06 6.50 30.17 70.08 14.24 40.75 1.08 14.04 0.62 10.31 2.03 5.79 0.1 7.77 0.12 9.65 10.1 12.06 0.09 6.64 22.8 27.69 0.49 11.48 1.41 21.14 26.42 49.61 1 6.85 0.14 10.96 0.11 6.57 25.7 55.83 0.64 14.25 26.21 42.10 18.69 9.84 0.71 2.28 0.1 8.19 12.91 31.15 1.1 5.54 1.5 39.21 0.2 6.43 2.32 20.55
December 18, 2025 at 2:37 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Back to posting updated mortality data, I was interrupted by betting a cancer infected kidney cut out. Here I show you single year age death rates in mixed party and Republican voting states as a percent of the same in Democratic voting states. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population
This graph shows the percent of age 0-84 deaths that occurred in 2023 in mixed party and Republican. voting states as a percent. of the same deaths occurring in Democrat voting states. See the table of states by party below in you are interested. The mixed party states experienced 524,329 age 0-84 deaths. If they had experienced the Democratic death rates that would have been 440,560, 83,769 or 16.0% fewer. Next, I do the same with data for Republican voting state that show living in a Republican voting state is worse than living in a mixed party state, which the above shows is worse than living in a Democratic voting state. The data available at wonder.cdc.gov shows that 634,137 aged 0-84 deaths occurred in Republican voting. states in 2023. If they had experienced the Democratic voting states, that would have been 489,314. That is 144,823 or 22.8% fewer than they would have experienced if they lived in a Democratic voting state. Anyway, here is the state two letter abbreviations listing them in my classification of states by party: Dem Mix Rep CA AZ AL CO GA AK CT IA AR DE MI FL DC MN ID HI NH IN IL NC KS ME OH KY MD PA LA MA TX MS NV WI MO NJ MT NM NE NY ND OR OK RI SC VT SD VA TN WA UT WV WY Here is a side note, My kidney cancer was discovered because I ran over my two upper legs with my tractor because I was working on it in a stupid and unsafe way. But because a good doctor found it my chances of living longer have increased. But think of it, If I hadn't been dumb enough to run over my self with my 1942 Ford 800 tractor, I could still have that cancer in me eating away on killing me early. Plus, the examination I got after running over myself found a couple more less serious health problems that probably will keep me alive a little longer also.
December 16, 2025 at 6:58 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
I have been playing with the data from the recent Tennessee special election for congress. I applied the difference between that state's 2024 results and this special election to estimate possible 2026 effects. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
Quickly this graph shows us there is a strong relationship, r=0.994, between between the Tennessee county vote for Aftyn Behn in the 7th congressional district special election a few days ago and Kamala Harris' vote last year. But the other regression statistics allow us to measure the change in the vote. The slope of 1.181 tells us how much Democrat Aftyn Behn's vote changed for each one point change in Kamala Harris' vote a year earlier and the intercept tells us how much Behn got in the hypothetical county where Harris got none. Let's estimate Behn's vote for the hypothetical county where Harris got 50%. y^ x=50 is: the intercept, 1.193 plus 50*1.181 or 60.243. Now I think that shows that even in this very strong Republican voting state, things have really changed. What we don't know is how much of that difference is due to Harris being an Asian-American. But, given similar changes in the elections held in other states recently, and that the Democratic vote is so low the the smaller very rural counties, I. don't think there is much of an anti-Asian effect in this set of votes. Next, here is some county data: County Harris % Behn % Behn – Harris Benton 18.1 21.1 3.0 Cheatham 26.3 32.7 6.4 Davidson 62.7 77.8 15.1 Decatur 15.0 19.6 4.6 Dickson 23.5 29.1 5.6 Hickman 19.1 22.6 3.5 Houston 20.3 26.1 5.8 Humphreys 21.4 27.3 5.9 Montgomery 40.0 45.3 5.3 Perry 15.0 21.9 6.9 Robertson 24.0 27.7 3.7 Stewart 17.5 22.6 5.1 Wayne 11.1 14.6 3.4 Williamson 33.0 38.3 5.3 This is a typical Republican drawn district, Democrats out-numbered.
December 8, 2025 at 11:39 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I play with regression analysis. First the graph is my favorite but it is unrelated to this problem, it just gets me space to write. See below the graph for text. I see some post display added text in that space but I can't figure out how to. 🧪 💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
Some comments on the graph at the end but first explaining the unusual. Here is the problem, the statistically measured relationship between percent Evangelical and death rates is very different by age groups. Here I first add up the total and explained sum of squares for four regressions predicting state age group death rates from state percent Southern Baptist, percent uninsured, percent smoking and COVID. The four regressions are for ages 0, 1-19, 20-64 and 65-84. Here the total variation in the four sets of death rates is 8,641,441. And the explained variations by the four sets of percent Evangelical is 6,649,946 Now r square is the last divided by the first or 0.77. This explains 77% of the variation, the sum of the errors in prediction squared divided by total variation, in death rates. I feel the better measure is the un-squared errors, multiple r = 0.88. That means 88% percent of the error made in predicting state death rates from the average is eliminated when predicting it from these four independent variables. Given the amount of measurement error in this data, that is very good. Now when the 85+ are added and I predict the total death rate, the r squared goes down to 0.32 and the r to 0.55. Why, I think what has happened is that most of the people dumb enough to pray for health care died before age 75 and the oldest group has less increase caused by being Southern Baptist. Not the graph. It is displayed in a post that may be a hundred post earlier and you can browse down the list until you see it to get a full description. But the important thing is that the 516 dots displays the correlation between year from 1999 through 2019, the last year before COVID, and the yearly death rate of a single year age, 0-85 and 85+, by sex for Democratic, mixed party, and Republican voting states. Note except for late middle age all six groups are fairly close together. In late middle age Rep females are on top and Dem males on bottom.
November 30, 2025 at 9:49 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
In the United States, our Native Americans show a major effect of survival of the fittest. There are two graphs here, I think the second shows the most. Be sure to look at those percents. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Native_Americans
The substantial increases among Native Americans during COVID squished this graph so much that a 53% increase in the middle aged Native American death rate from 1999 through 2019 doesn't look like much. I have been through a lot of mortality data and the middle aged Native American COVID death rate increases are the strongest of all of them. For general descriptions, I will do the young first. They essentially held close to the same death rate for this one year short of a quarter of a century. They are rare because their death rate did not go down during that time period, especially in an industrialized society. Their COVID increase actually waited until the third year to raise their total death rate, that was not that bad. Now the middle aged. To let you know just how bad things have been for the middle aged Native Americans, I will hit you with a few numbers. This graph starts with a middle aged death rate of 373.5, which was about a sixth higher than the same measure at 323 for same age non-Hispanic Whites. That increases to 571 while our non-Hispanics joined in increasing, theirs went up to 400.1. Prior to COVID our middle aged Native Americans death rate increased by 197.5 deaths per 100,000 while these Whites increased by 77.1, a little over a third as much as the Native Americans. Then COVID hit. I can't think of words that say more than the graph. That top dot represents a death rate of 936.9. Having had a Native American grand-mother, and growing up in western Oklahoma on the Washata, a Native American named, river and with pure Native American friends, it is hard for me to do this. But to finish up with the bottom line. While it looks good, I keep remembering that one reason it does is that their increased middle aged death rates helped make the elderly line look better by not letting a lot of the people who should have died at the older ages did not live long enough to be here. On to the other graph. Here I make the kinds of comparisons I think we should think about on this annual Native American day. Let's look at these lines from elderly to young. The Native American elderly death rate regularly runs a good 20% lower than non-Hispanic Whites. This low death rate has a good and bad cause. The good one is Medicare, the most universal and affordable health care in the United States. My feeling is that this keeping up with the declining rates experienced by the non-Hispanic Whites is in part due to their living through higher death rates at earlier ages so there is a survival of the fittest effect showing up among Native Americans. Now to the middle aged. Their exception to constantly increasing is only in the last two years when vaccine brought the COVID death rates down. Alcohol abuse plays a major role in Native American deaths rates. Here is my theory why: Alcohol was introduced to Native Americans by whites who used it as a tool to fuck over the Native Americans in a way that fit all the definitions of fuck. Drunk women were raped and robed. Drunk men were robed in embarrassing ways. But when the drunk and exploited experience was over and the exploiting rapist gone, everyone in the hung-over community had misbehaved. Unlike white drunks, none of the Native Americans the sobering up Native Americans around them had stayed sober and as a result none of them were in shape to punish the ones who had done bad things while drunk. The result: Getting drunk became their ultimate excuse. Next the young, their percent starts around 150 percent of the whites and consistently increased to around 200 percent at in 2023. One major cause has been car wrecks, many caused by drunk driving. I am going to quit now so I can post this on Native American day.
November 28, 2025 at 10:35 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Using state level data, percent Southern Baptist is the second strongest predictor of state death rates. The effect is this strong, r=0.84, when Southern Baptist is the only predictor for the 15 most Southern Baptist states. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population
This graph shows the relationship between the level of insolvent with the Southern Baptist church in the 15 states with the highest Southern Baptist membership and the state under one year old death rate. I made this graph focusing on the states where the relationship between percent Southern Baptist church attendance is highest. What I would like to do is order some bumper stickers that say something like: I would like to get bumper stickers that says something like: Pray to cure sick babies to kill them If you have a better bumper sticker wording idea and don't mind if I steal it, please send it as a comment or email it to me at: pecanjim@bellsouth.net Here is an example of a suggested prayer on a Baptist church web site: Overwhelm Me Prayer Sweet Jesus, I ask that you overwhelm me with Your power. Show me miracles of healing like never before. I delight myself in You, and You are my hope for the future. In the glory of Your presence, I feel the mercy, grace, and love You have for me. I ask that You shine sunbeams of healing directly into my soul and help my body to recover. No one is able but You, and my faith lies in Your promises. In Your precious name, I pray. Amen. It is the eighth prayer out of 11 suggested at this source: https://connectusfund.org/11-strong-baptist-prayers-for-healing The correlation, r, for the displayed data is r=0.84. The same for the rest of the states is r=0.47 and the r for all 50 put together is 0.59
November 28, 2025 at 3:05 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I look at the relationship between the percent of the state population that is foreign born and state age 20-64 death rate. See text for why this age group and more. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
The first thing I notice about this distribution is the variation around the regression line is no where near consistent. The distribution is widest on the left where percent foreign born is low and quite narrow at the high end. The second thing I notice is that the state death rates are lowest where the percent born outside the United States are highest, they are even lower than the lowest death rates at the far left. The problem here is interpreting cause and effect. Does people moving to a state bring the death rate down or do people move to areas where the death rate is lower? At least this tells us that if we are logical in moving, that is going to a state with lower death rates, we can expect more people from other countries to live there and at least greater variety in restaurants by cultures. In looking over the states, I can clearly see the Democratic voting states, excluding Texas, have both lower death rates and higher percents foreign born. I would like to pull down a couple of more variables from wonder.cdc.gov but their web side has been down all day so I will go ahead and quit this one.
November 26, 2025 at 5:32 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
This graph shows the single year age population in Republican voting states death rate as the percent of the same death rate in Democratic voting states. See text below graph for more information. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
To produce this graph I left the mixed party out and divided the Republican voting state single year age death rate by the Democratic voting states same age and multiplied that by 100 to get a percent. Notice that the children under age ten in Republican voting states have death rates that are generally above 150% of the same aged children in Democratic voting states. I am posting this because one of Trump's high level administrators suggested moving to Republican voting states because their inflation was half a percent less than in Democratic voting states. Since I think people should care more about how early they, and especially their children die in Democratic versus Republican voting states. As they grow up the percentages goes down until the mid twenties and then they level of around the 130 to 140 percent range where they stay until retirement takes them out of state regulated capitalist health insurance to Medicare/Medicaid. Then party difference decline until our data ends at age 84. I don't show the 85+ group because they are very different that the single year ages because nobody lives through it. Anyway, here are the states in the three groups, the mixed are excluded from the graph: I produced this graph. making it, I examined the last twenty years of voting and grouped states into Democrat, mixed party and Republican. To keep this graph simple I only compared. single year age death rates in Democratic versus Republican voting states. Dem Mix Rep CA AZ AL CO GA AK CT IA AR DE MI FL DC MN ID HI NH IN IL NC KS ME OH KY MD PA LA MA TX MS NV WI MO NJ MT NM NE NY ND OR OK RI SC VT SD VA TN WA UT WV WY
November 24, 2025 at 12:28 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is a link and table from it that shows specific causes of death increased by smoking:
ourworldindata.org/data-insight...
This is why one behavior, smoking, is stronger than specific causes. One of the best pieces of research I have ever seen. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
Smoking increases the risk of death from many causes
Most of us have heard that smoking damages the lungs. The chart drives this home: in the US, men who smoke are around 21 times more likely to die from lung cancer than men who have never smoked.
ourworldindata.org
November 23, 2025 at 5:02 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here the way I see what is going on: Trump and the fascist Republicans are just working to give Hitler a late win. It worked in Russia, why not the USA?🧪💡💡 #Sociology #Population #Think #News
November 23, 2025 at 12:49 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here are two graphs that show the relationship between percent smoking and life expectancy, the age by which half the people born die. The difference between the two slopes surprised the hell out of me. See ALT for more information. 🧪
💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
Here life expectancy increases a little as the percent of population smoking cigarettes increases. I suspect this is due to both increasing with income but I am not adding a control variable here. Now let's look at the next, graph for the United States. Here the pattern is in the predicted direction but the effect is much stronger than I expected. It tells me clearly that smoking in the United States has a very different effect on the smokers health than it does in the rest of the world. In an earlier post here I compared several predictors of life expectancy and three variables remained statistically significant when controlling for several others. Cigarette smoking was the strongest, followed by percent Southern Baptist and percent of the middle aged without health insurance. A couple of data analysis points about this graph., First, the pattern in the dots strongly suggest that the relationship is not simply linear. If you look at the first half of dots you should be able to see the pattern seems more toward horizontal than the line and the last half the line is more horizontal than the dots. I won't do it here but those two halves need to be looked at separately. Second, the regression statistics. Here r= -0.80, b=-0.56 and a=84.3. You can reduce your errors in predicting state life expectancy by 80 percent when you know the percent of the state who smokes cigarettes. As a state's population increases in percent smoking by one percent, the life expectancy declines by 56% of a year! And the predicted life expectancy for a state with zero percent smokers is 84.3, that is one tenth of a year higher than the fourth and fifth ranked Japan and Canada in the CIA's World Fact Book. Given that large increase in death rates probably. means that the smoking that goes on probably kills more people than just the smokers early. I simply cannot see that large of effect without second hand smoke killing people also. Well, enough said on this for now.
November 22, 2025 at 8:45 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
This graph shows the latest year of available data, 2023, single year age homicide and suicide rates by single year ages, 0-84 and 85+, This shows much more about what is going. on than just repeating the numbers 9.3 suicides and 5.4 homicides per 100,000 om 2023. 🧪💡☠️ #Suicide #Sociology #Population
Up to age 40 you can see that the Homicide and Suicide rates have fairly similar patterns and with homicides especially higher in the late teens and early 20's, but as we move the later middle and elderly ages, suicides are much higher. What I find amazing is the shift in the trends at age 70. Suicides increase dramatically and homicides just keep changing like they were, except at the very end. I think, but I have no data, that a lot of very late suicides are escaping what people feel will be a bad dying experience. As I look at it, it made me think putting a few years of one. group. on one graph might be interesting. Anyway, I think it shows a lot more than saying the suicide rate is 9.3 and the homicide rate is 5.4.
November 22, 2025 at 12:57 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
This is an addition to the earlier post on Southern Baptist and COVID death rates. This on includes a link to a Florida Southern Baptist church web page that includes instructions on avoiding immunization. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
Here is a link to a church page that addresses this issue: If you go to this page and scroll down a couple of pages you will find the text provided by the church to help their members avoid immunizations. The earlier text clearly argues against immunization. https://founders.org/articles/grace-baptist-church-statement-on-religious-exemption-to-mandatory-medical-procedures/ I am going to send the minister a link to this post including. this graph to try to contact some beyond the Blue Sky group of like-mes. This is also a try to provide a click. to an earlier post that takes a different look at this same data: Well that didn't work. In party this is an experiment so I ask. for a little tolerance.
November 22, 2025 at 4:31 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is another way of looking at state percent Southern Baptist and death rates, measured here as state total population life expectancy. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
First here is a context to understand what the predicted state life expectancy for hypothetical states with 0% and 100%f it in our CIA's ranking of countries in the CIA World Fact Book life expectancy table: Predicted life expectancy at zero percent Southern Baptist is 80.3. Here is the CIA data line : Rank. Country. Life Exp. Data source. 55 Chile 80.3 2024 est. The predicted life expectancy at 100% percent Southern Baptist is 72.2, halfway between: Rank. Country Life Exp. Data source 164 Russia 72.3 2024 est. 165 Togo 72.1 2024 est. If you look at the dot for Mississippi, you will see that it is not all the way to the predicted 100%, it is right at 70% and has a life expectancy of 75. Anyway the scatter plot gives you a sense of where each state stands. The important thing to see is that the states with small Southern Baptist populations are generally clustered up at. the high life expectancy end while. the increase. in percent Southern Baptist flows right. along. the line showing a lower and flower life expectancy as percent Southern Baptist increases. Here are the regression statistics: r -0.89 b -0.08 a 80.30 Here is a general description of what I think is the root cause this relationship between percent Southern Baptist and death rates: Back when Obama Care was passed, it included a provision to allow religious groups to offer their own health care. I can find no data the level they substitute prayer for health care. However, I live in rural Alabama, see that AL dot on the graph, and I find relying on prayer for health care is not rare around here. That is why I put together the data to produce the. above graph. The limitation is that this includes no control variables. I don't have room to include a total multivariate analysis but when I started with several variables and whittled the down with multiple regression, percent smoking cigarettes was strongest, this was second and percent uninsured was third.
November 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
What's up? Repetition of Trump's lies about illegal Hispanic immigrants being the most violent. Here is good solid research that actually measures it:
www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/defaul...

#science #Sociology #Population
www.migrationpolicy.org
November 20, 2025 at 12:59 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Yesterday I posted this graph and described the changes in 2023 firearm and total suicide rates in Democratic and Republican voting states. But I forgot to include the number of deaths each experienced and would have experience at the other rate. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Republican #Democratic
First a brief summary of what the graph shows. First all four groups show increases up to about age 21 followed by very stable death rates up to about age 55 where all but Democratic firearm suicides started going down until about age 70 where they all started going up. This last rate of increase was strongest among the Republican party states firearm suicide rates. Now to what I forgot to include yesterday, the actual number of deaths and what each party's numbers would have been if they experienced the other party's death rates: Here they are: Suicide rate Dem states At Rep rates Pct chg IF Gun suicide 163,456 244,829 49.78 All suicide 326,559 488,994 49.74 Rep States At Dem rates Gun suicide 177,147 118,602 -33.05 All suicide 353,789 236,935 -33.03 One thing I see in this that automatically creates a warning flag is that one set of percent changes are almost exactly one half and the other almost exactly one third. But I have re-worked and re-worked and re-worked the data and I am left suspecting that there may be something going on with the data, but I can't figure out what it is. Anyway the main point is that the different rates reflected in height of the party lines is a large number of deaths. What have I done about it. I found it too late to determine where my wife and I live but both daughters live in Democratic voting states.
November 17, 2025 at 12:35 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I display single year age total and by firearm suicide death rates by single year age up to age 84 for Democratic and Republican voting states. |See text for more information. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Republican #Democratic
The order of the colored limes is a bit confusing so let's look at them in order from the bottom to the top. The bottom line of square yellow dots shows the suicide death rates by firearms in the Democratic voting states by age as you follow that line you get the firearm suicide rates by age from age nine through age 84. The age group 85+ is excluded because it is hard to interpret because nobody lives through it. The pattern is generally followed by each of the groups, from age 9 through 22 the firearm suicide rate goes up. Then it sharply shifts to nearly level line that slightly increases up to age 55 when all but Democratic firearm suicides decline until about age 70 when the rate slightly more than doubles at the end. Next, let's do the line of green diamonds, the total Democratic voting states, their being lower at the right end actually makes them lower than the Republican voting states firearm suicides. They follow the same pattern as the Democrats by firearms except they decline from age 55 to about 70. Then they increase like the others but at a less steep rate in increase. Next to the top is the Republican's suicides by firearms. They follow the Democratic voting states almost exactly to age 20 then they edge down to bouncing between two and three points below the Democrats total until age 65 when they exhibit the steepest increase in the final years. The last line is the red diamonds for the Republican total which is consistently the highest. They follow the pattern of the total Democrat line of dots but generally get closer to the total Democratic line at the end. Here are the two letter abbreviations for states: Dem Mix Rep CA AZ AL CO GA AK CT IA AR DE MI FL DC MN ID HI NH IN IL NC KS ME OH KY MD PA LA MA TX MS NV WI MO NJ MT NM NE NY ND OR OK RI SC VT SD VA TN WA UT WV WY
November 16, 2025 at 2:08 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
What's up? Some health insurance TV commercials. Remember that the more times you see a particular commercial, the more money that company will make by giving you the least for the money you give them. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Buy #think
November 14, 2025 at 2:30 PM