Dr. James H. Gundlach
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pecanjim.bsky.social
Dr. James H. Gundlach
@pecanjim.bsky.social
3.5K followers 5.6K following 1.7K 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
The total United States reported life expectancy, age by which half the people die, is higher in Harris voting states than the states that voted for Trump. Two other things: Total USA is higher than all the states and people in 99 countries live longer. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
In the 2022 life expectancy data, Hawaii was the only state that had a longer life expectancy than that reported for the United States in the CIA's World Fact Book. In the 2023 data, Hawaii joined the rest of the states below the CIA's reported life expectancy for the United States. To provide national data that allowed states to be compared to the nation as a whole, I used the traditional method of calculating life expectancy, the age by which half the deaths occurred and got 76.8 years. I sorted the states and found Maryland the 25th had a life expectancy of 76.3 years. Virginia which ranks 29th matched the 76.8. This suggest only a little deviation from a normal distribution, as I looked at the total list, I saw Virginia had the matching life expectancy and is ranked 29th, close enough to the middle to make me feel there is no problem using this calculation for the nation. I then compared this national life expectancy with the CIA ranked table and found it tied Sri Lanka which just happened to rank 100th out of 227 countries on the CIA list. In other words, calculating an honest life expectancy for the United States, which pays the most for health care has 99 countries with longer life expectancy that spend less on health care. Health care wise we are not getting our money's worth. I wanted to paint the state abbreviations party colors but still can't get the software to do it so here is the table of the state abbreviations 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 In general, the states with the longest life expectancy are solid Democratic voting states, New Mexico is the major exception. And, the states with lowest life expectancy are the Southern Republican voting states, the mid-west Republican voting states have life expediencies even with the lower Democratic states.
November 11, 2025 at 11:29 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I look at the bi-variate effect of state percent Southern Baptist on death rates. While these numbers may appear high in light of the size of the Southern Baptist population, their effect on a states death rate is not limited to them. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
First some background. The Southern Baptist gained the ability to offer their own health care and insurance system as a rider on the Obama Care legislation. Over the years they have offered very economical health insurance that can be cheap because it includes prayer, a very cheap and ineffective treatment, for health care. An additional note is that promoting prayer for care is not limited to the Southern Baptist population. When a practicing Southern Baptist knows a non member who is having health problems, if that non member cannot afford care they may well rely of their neighbor's prayer for cure. The research problem is that we have no way to measure the extent prayer is used for health care in the United States. Now to regression analysis results looking at state percent Southern Baptist and state death rates: r = 0.66 2,788,934 297,034 b = 5.17 pct 9.6 a = 867.21 Using the above regression results I was able to estimate that the additional deaths related to the state percent Southern Baptist was about 297,034 in 2023, that was 9.6% of the United States in 2023 total number of deaths, 3,085,968. I feel every Southern Baptist church needs to post "Prayer does not cure!" on their announcement signs everyone one driving past the church can read. But I have lost count of the things I would like to see done to save lives that there is absolutely no chance that they would ever happen. I am ending with the regression results predicting state under age 1 death rates from state percent Southern Baptist: r = 0.71 b = 5.11 a = 461.20 The a = 461.2 is the predicted infant death rate for the hypothetical state with no Southern Baptist. The b = 5.11 means it goes up to 461.2+(5.11*100) or 972.2. This last number is the only estimate of the Southern Baptist infant mortality rate I can come up with.
November 10, 2025 at 1:23 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is a refined version of the kind of graph that I have posted five times before. Here a dot does not represent the value of x and y for data, it shows the value of r, the correlation, between year and single year age death rates. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
For the United States, life expectancy increased from 76.7 in 1999 to 78.9 in 2019. That does not look bad. But, it does not tell you that the trend changed from very consistent declines for our 17 year olds to very consistent increases for when they live to be 30 year olds. Now that pattern is the same for all three party groups of states. But for the late middle aged, the major party differences emerge. To put it simply, living in Democratic voting states is a hell of lot better for the late middle aged. A major problem with this graph is that it displays the values of the correlation, r, between year and death rates and a substantial part of our adult population not only don't understand r's they are afraid of them. If you feel you are in this group, here is an easy way to understand this graph displaying r's. If the dot is high, like those around age 30, that means those death rates very consistently increased over this time. If they are right at halfway up the graph that means they went down as much as they went up and if they are down at the bottom of the graph they consistently went down over time. Now one problem is it doesn't show how much they changed. The problem with showing how much they changed is that the major consistent thing about death rates is they go up with age and when you deal with single measures, they are dominated by changes in elderly deaths. The other problem is the standard measure is life expectancy, this is simply the age by which half the people die. The 1999 life expectancy of 76.7 does not go up when younger age groups deaths increase. And a death at age 75 changes life expectancy the same amount as a death at age 1. Our health care for the elderly has improved while a lot of our health care for the middle ages has gone down. How? One way is capitalist health insurance has moved to prior approval for their dominated population's health care. This is an unmeasured lack of adequate health care is killing them early.
November 5, 2025 at 2:59 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here are two graphs showing the changes in death rates by party state votes for in presidential elections for non-Hispanic Whites aged 20-54 and 65-84. See text for descriptions and explanations. I wonder who Everyone hits?🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News #Everyone
This graph shows the death rates for non-Hispanic Whites aged 20-54 broken down by party the state the dead lived in has regularly voted for. The data used to make the dots are below.this text. The last year of data is dominated by the the deaths caused by COVID during the first year. In the United States we have conducted a natural experiment by turning over payment for health care for the middle aged to capitalist health insurance and payment for health care for the elderly to socialist medicare and the capitalist clone of it to Medicaid. Now the populations covered by Medicare and Medicaid or not identified in mortality data so the only comparison our data makes available are between middle aid health care that is regulated by state government and the elderly care which has socialist care for a big portion of our elderly with a growing portion covered by the capitalist clone. In general the middle aged Non-Hispanic Whites in Republican voting states have generally doubled the amount that their death rates are higher than their peers in Democratic voting states. At the same time, the mixed party states moved from essentially being tied with the Democratic voting states to very close to half way between the Democratic and Republican voting states. Here are the data: Year Dem Rep Mixed 1999 190.8 227.3 190.3 2000 192.6 234.5 196.9 2001 204 241.9 201.2 2002 203.1 250 206.5 2003 202.9 256 207.3 2004 202 255.5 207.8 2005 203 262.6 214.5 2006 204.7. 266.7 215 2007 201.5 264.4 213.5 2008 198.9 267.8 216.6 2009 200.8 270 218.4 2010 192.3 268.4 216.5 2011 194.8 270.2 221.5 2012 193 267.1 216.7 2013 193 264.4 220.6 2014 194.7 268.8 219.5 2015 196.3 273.8 227.8 2016 203.1 282.5 239.7 2017 201.8 281.1 243.4 2018 197.8 275.3 231.3 2019 195.5 270.7 225.9 2020 221.4 313 256.8 This graph displays the age 65-84 deaths per 100,000 by states grouped by the party they vote for. I am posting it to show how our elderly death rates have gone down by all three party groups. The most noticeable thing is that party differences barely existed when this graph starts but grew in a slight imitation of the middle aged pattern shown in the first graph. The important thing is these changes show declining death rates while the middle age only shows changes that are increases. The best the middle age does is the Democratic voting states almost holding on to earlier death rates. The two graphs clearly show that capitalist health care KILLS. The question is: What is causing the elderly in non-Democratic states to increasingly show higher and higher death rates? I have some ideas about how it could be going on but I haven't found any way to test any of them. I consider the one that suggests this is simply a result of the denied care during middle age. I believe it is caused by damages caused by lack of health care during the middle age years to leave their bodies weakened and more likely to be killed by later health problems. But again I can't figure out how to find data to test that hypothesis. Anyway, here is the same kind of data for the elderly that the first one presented for age 20-54. I have found that Bluesky does not let you copy data, If you would like a copy to play with, just email me at pecanjim@bellsouth.net and I will send a copy to the email address requesting it. Year Dem Rep Mixed 1999 3732 3783 3806 2000 3675 3770 3767 2001 3629 3722 3708 2002 3606 3709 3693 2003 3538 3647 3621 2004 3405 3515 3510 2005 3363 3507 3489 2006 3269 3389 3358 2007 3165 3295 3259 2008 3092 3297 3243 2009 2952 3162 3092 2010 2889 3159 3070 2011 2855 3115 3035 2012 2723 3035 2925 2013 2680 3025 2880 2014 2610 2977 2839 2015 2608 2971 2837 2016 2556 2925 2768 2017 2540 2949 2774 2018 2499 2932 2750 2019 2466 2904 2723 2020 2784 3259 3062
November 3, 2025 at 11:06 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I compare the effect of state percent Hispanic and percent of state vote for Trump on state firearm murder rates. I have done this because I see our public unaware of Trump's lies about how criminal Hispanics are. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News #Hello
This scatter plot shows the relationship between state percent Hispanic, the population President Trump is saying they are so bad that they need to be gotten rid of. I think this is the weakest statistical relationship I have shown in the more than 200 I have displayed here. Now look at the next graph, the same kind of graph but comparing the last election's state vote for Trump against the state firearm homicide rate. Here you can see that there is a weak statistical relationship between the percent of the state vote for Trump in the last presidential election and the state firearm homicide rate in 2022 and 2023 together. The more of the state voters voting for Trump, the higher the state firearm homicide rate. Now, Trump and other Republicans are pro gun sales, they do what the gun industry wants which leads to a higher gun death rate in states that Trump got more votes in. So Trump's reason for going after Hispanics is just another one of his too many lies to count. Just a side note on another one of his lies, the recently cleared area next to the US capitol is being set up to build a much larger building than the proposed super luxury dining room, he clearly has plans to do more than he is telling the public. Enough written, we hare headed on a week long trip tomorrow so I want to get this posted.
October 25, 2025 at 11:34 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
In the earlier graph it showed that people aged 30 had the most solid increase in United States death rates from 1999 through 2023. Here those total death rates are broken down by the three parties. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
Here the graph shows how the part of the United States population that has had the most solid increases in death rates from 1999 through 2023 has differed by political party. The major things I see in it is the move of the mixed party group from close to the Democratic voting states to close to the Republican voting states. In addition, the increases in all the death rates right after 2014 were pre-COVID and like so many of the other increases were weakest in Democratic voting states. The increases during COVID are substantial and tells me many more of the the people in the United States need to know that the few countries that had higher COVID death rates than the United States were not industrialized societies with a good supply of modern health care technology.
October 20, 2025 at 8:49 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Single year age mortality data is back on line at wonder.cdc.gov. So rather than bitch about this data being deleted, here is my favorite graph using it. See text under larger graph for details. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
This graph shows one of the ways that the United States is unique. Our young and old non-Hispanic whites have declining deaths rates from 1999 to 2023 but a big hunk of our middle aged have increasing death rates. Most of our young and old have 2023 death rates that are around 80% as high as they were in 1999 but as you move from age 16 to 30 that changes to a 169% as high. This pattern in changing death rates by age exists only in the United States! What is happening here is we have a capitalist health care delivery system that does not treat most of our ill who cannot afford to pay and people who their software predicts they will lose money on. Our young are primarily covered by private health insurance that in almost all the states are backed up by states paying for care, that is socialist, for the uninsured young. Those dot under the 100% level means it has succeeded in bring those death rates down. That line of dots going up after age 17 is caused by many of the people experiencing potentially fatal health problems not being able to afford care under the capitalist dominated part of our health care delivery system. In addition to a large part of your middle age population not having health insurance, the health insurance industry uses software created to to predict care people will need to deny care to people software predicts they will lose money on. After hitting that 169% change in the age specific death rate at age 30, the graph shows a consistently declining death rate that gets back down to 80% at age 65. Currently our CIA ranks the United States 49th in life expectancy, We should do better. End note: I have limited this data to non-Hispanic Whites because this group is the major political force in our country and when they see data for the country as a whole the Republicans among them are inclined to blame our high middle age death rates on death rates among our minorities rather than whites.
October 20, 2025 at 3:11 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is a quick little post late in the day. It shows the COVID death rates for total populations of states grouped by party, blue for Democratic, red for Republicans and gray for mixed. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
Just a few words. The Democratic voting states have the lowest rate for all years but the first when they have the highest. That is because COVID hit the east and west coast first, especially New York and California because they have the major areas relieving people coming from other countries. The difference during the later years are due to state differences in COVID vaccination rates. As a side note, we have a substantial under count of COVID deaths. I am trying to estimate under counted numbers and if I succeed, I will post a corrected graph.
October 16, 2025 at 3:32 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is a graph I intended to post about three months ago. It shows the death rates for ages 20-64 of all races by party by year from 2018 through 2023. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
The most interesting thing I find in the graph is the differences in changes from 2020, the first year of COVID which was without immunization, and 2021 the first year with vaccine. I guess I should look at that and provide some numbers by party. Let me know if you would like to that.
October 15, 2025 at 11:13 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
This is a complex graph that I will explain how to look at it in the text accompanying the graph. Click ALT to see more. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
The most likely response upon seeing this is "What the hell?". Each line of the same dots displays that years death rates as a percent of 1999. The middle dark blue diamonds is for the next year so it is very close to the 100% line in the middle of the graph. The most important thing is look at the changes in the general pattern by age. First not that the vertical arrangement of the different lines of dots are the same for the age 0-16 and 65-84. If the United States had the same general changes for all ages like the rest of the economically developed countries that general pattern would have ran very consistently all the way across the graph. In the United States the young are primarily covered by private health insurance but in almost all the states have some back up socialized health care to provide care for our uninsured young. Then as we age into the middle aged, we have health care dominated by capitalist health insurance that has a highly varied prior approval requirement before health care is administered. Then the age group 55 through 64 provides optional Medicare coverage for many of the people in this group that are in serious need of health care that capitalist insurance does not adequately cover. Then for age 65+ Medicare and the private health insurance policy called Medicaid provides treatment. In general the most consistent declining death rates are among the 65+ followed by the age 0-16 with a complex pattern of death rates that increase in different amount and different time periods in that messy middle of the graph. This pattern in death rate changes among our middle aged has several consequences: One is that our CIA says people who live in 48 other countries live longer than we do even though we pay the most for health care. A second is we pay more for health care than any other country. For example Canada pays a little over half as much as we do for health care and their life expectancy is 3.3 years longer. Enough said.
October 12, 2025 at 1:13 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
In trying to see what the effects of religious beliefs are on death rates, I have found indications that religious fundamentalism, especially Southern Baptist, are a major driver of high death rates. The problem is quality of data. See ALT for more. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Demography #Think #News
Looking for measures of state percent Southern Baptist I found measures for the years 1980, 1990, 2020, 2010 and 2020 in: https://www.usreligioncensus.org/index.php/reports_analyses Given that in working with hard to get data I regularly look for data problems and when I found all these ten year apart measures correlated at .99 or higher, I concluded that this was a problem. I kept coming back to the problem and around 4:00 one morning I had time on my hand and decided to search the on line Yellow Pages. I ran a search for "Southern Baptist church" for each state and at the bottom of the first page of listing was the total number for the state search. One problem was that Texas, Florida and Georgia turned up with the number 3,000 which looks like the system's maxim number it will report. Alabama only hit 2,946. I went ahead and recorded the number of each state and after running several years of data I kept finding the Yellow Pages count was more strongly related to the state age 20-64 death rates, the average r for the survey data was 0.60 and the average r for the Yellow Pages number was 0.77. The values of all 112 r's are displayed on the graph. Given how well this graph of age 20-64 showed things, I went ahead and repeated it for ages 65-84. Here I show the same 112 possible correlations for the same independent variables, the decade percent Southern Baptist and the 2025 Yellow Pages listing for Southern Baptist Churches. The relative distance between the two lines of dots are very similar in the degree of running together and relative distance and position between them. But this line of dots shows much more of an increase over time than the middle age graph. Here the r's for the survey data increase from a -0.07 to 0.71 from 1966 to 2023 with an average of 0.38. The same numbers for the Yellow Pages data are an increase from 0.16 to 0.82 with an average of 0.57. This tells me a few things. First, that the Southern Baptist churches have more substantially increased their elder's relying on prayer for health care than their middle aged. Second, the Yellow Pages measure is consistently a better measure, and cheaper, than the survey data. Third, I need to see how these relationships hold up controlling for other variables, especially the only other variable that I have found is stronger than percent Southern Baptist, percent who smoke cigarettes.
October 11, 2025 at 1:32 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I compare the percent changes in single year age deaths rates from 1999 to 2019, the last year before COVID, for non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks as well as Hispanics of all races. Click ALT to see more: 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Auburn #Think #News
I think this graph shows some of the most unique in the United States changes in death rates. I usually include the data used to create graphs but that is not possible here with as much data I used to produce this graph. The graph starts with a lot of scattered dots showing little racial and ethnic differences among the young. The health care for the young in the United States is primarily covered by capitalist health insurance but almost all the states have socialist health care for the uninsured young. Much of the differences in the height of the dots among the young is due to the random effects showing up in data with small n's. But in general, our young experienced fairly consistent declines. Even the high Hispanic dot at age 6 is for a one percent decline. The worst part of our unique death rates hist in young adulthood. Our middle aged health care is dominated by capitalist health insurance. The United States is unique in the economically developed world in that we allow the capitalist health insurance to delay care as they decide if they will cover particular health care. This practice was put in place after software was developed that allowed the health insurance industry to predict who they would lose money on based on early adult health problems. Those upward slopes in the three lines of dots are produced by some of the people being uninsured and the health insurance industry denying care. The main thing this graph shows is that this increase in death rates in the private health insurance covered population is strongest in the most insured group, non-Hispanic Whites. The last part of the graph shows that Medicare coverage produces the best protection against unnecessary early deaths, We simply wait for people to get too old for civilized health care to have a life expectancy among the longest. I will end repeating my most repeated line. Canada has a life expectancy that is 3.3 years longer than we in the United States does.
October 10, 2025 at 7:36 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is a detailed single year of age by political party graph that I have put together in an attempt to make differences in death rates understandable. Click alt to see more: 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
This graph compares the single year age death rates in the Mixed Party and Republican voting states with same statistic in Democratic voting states. The last dot, for age group 85+ is essentially equal because nobody out lives the + sign. The graph starts with the very young in Mixed Party states a little above 130. That means those death rates are a little over 30% higher than the same age death rates in Democratic voting states. Both lines become more level for almost twenty years before moving down together until about age 40. From there the Republican voting states average about 108%, 8% higher says the same thing, of Democratic voting states while the mixed party states average close to 105%. Now the standard measure of death rates is life expectancy, the age by which half the people die. I find life expectancy a hard to understand measure communicating to anyone without a degree in demography when describing death rates. Here are the 2023 life expediencies for the three groups: Democratic voting states is 77.9 and the other two are the same at 76.5. That simply does not tell me much about the differences. The fact that the two lines of dots showing different death rates in mixed party and Republican voting states have the. same life expectancy shows that the don't measure everything. Here are the state abbreviations for the three groups: 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 MI MT NM NE NY ND OR OK RI SC VT SD TN UT WV WY
October 8, 2025 at 7:54 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
This graph presents the total deaths rates of states from 1999 through 2023 for states grouped by the party they voted for. See text for more information: 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
This graph shows that Republican voting states consistently has had higher death rates than mixed party states which have consistently had higher death rates than the Democratic voting States from 1999 through 2023. This pattern is so stable that the only noticeable difference is for the first and second years of the COVID epidemic. The Democratic voting states being higher is primarily due to COVID hitting the east and west coast states, among which Democrats make up a very high percent, where COVID hit first. The pattern reverses the second year because when COVID vaccine became. available Democrats were much more likely to get vaccinated during the first year. The slower to learn and less scientific findings accepting non-Democrats were less likely to accept vaccinations and as a result they experienced an increase in death rates in 2021 while the Democratic voting states experienced a decline. Out of the little more than 200 graphs I have posed here, I think this one is the simplest and easiest to read. What I don't have is data to show is how much better the Democratic voters in the Republican voting states did than their mixed party and Republican voting neighbors.
October 8, 2025 at 4:47 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I show changes in death rates from 1999 through 2020 for the United States population divided into age groups determined by how their health care is paid for, 0, 1-19, 20-64 and 65-84. Age 85+ is excluded because nobody lives through it. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population
I present graphs using this color coded pattern for all four age groups displayed here. The groups are based on how health care is provide, especially paid for. Age 0 is special and highly variable by state in ways that are not consistently related to how other ages are cared for. During this time, the United States has reduced death rates so much that we actually have lower death rates than Canada for this age group. The thing to remember is this shows us how death rates changed from 1999 through 2020. That does have an effect on actual level but the states that entered this period with higher death rates found it easier to bring the death rates down than the states that entered with lower death rates, this is especially the case for Utah and Maine. Now to the next age group. Age group 1-19, is also unique because the primary way for paying for health care, capitalist health insurance, is backed up by highly variable state funded care for the young that are not covered by by the primary method. This age group has the lowest death rates and because of that, they have minimal effects on measures like life expectancy that count deaths by all ages to be calculated. In general, these younger people, like the under age one group have a positive effect on state life expediencies during these two decades. Next, the group most exclusive provided health care through the most capitalist part of our health care system, ages 20-64. This is our age group that is dominated by the correlations that show increasing death rates, positive values of r. New York is the only state with a negative correlation and it is only a -0.04 soon followed by California and Nevada with r's below 0.15. In general this graph displays the death rate changes for the only part of the earth's population with industrialize economies that generally experienced increasing death rates during this time period. In general I feel we will not stop this evil increase in our death rates until we follow the rest of the economically developed part of the world and get rid of capitalist funded health care. Now the last graph, for ages 65-84. Sorry, I don't know why I made this one so wide, but it still shows that it is the most solidly almost white graph. Again, this does not mean they are all at the same level, it just means that they all have the most consistently declining death rates. What I find most amazing is that this has been going on for a quarter of a century if we exclude the recent COVID deaths and our most extreme idiocy is our ignoring our middle age increasing death rates while our elderly have declining death rates! The main thing this shows us is that the major capitalist funded health care in the economically developed part of our earth's population that has consistently shown increasing death rates is this capitalist funded part, our middle aged. And things are looking like they will be adding our elderly to the middle aged system of denying health care to make the rich richer. If Trump succeeds in ending democracy in the United States and establishing a totally rich dominated political system, we will experience a long period of increasing death rates for the sole purpose of making the richest people in the world richer.
October 5, 2025 at 12:29 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here are the United States with a number that says where their life expectancy fits in the CIA ranking of countries. The text under the graph has a link so you can go to the CIA World Fact Book and see which countries are around a state you are interested in: 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population
To see which countries are close to states you are interested in go to: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/life-expectancy-at-birth/country-comparison/ There you can scroll down to find the countries around the states you are interested in. Also while on that web page you can click on the country name and it will take you to a page that will give you a lot of information about a country. A final note: The CIA lists the United States as having a longer life expectancy than any of the states. That is logically impossible if they are calculated the same way. I will conclude by noting that I think the CIA exaggerates the United States life expectancy.
October 4, 2025 at 2:26 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
I think I am in the longest time between BlueSky post since I started. I have been working on measuring the relationship between percent Southern Baptist and death rates when I ran into a problem with the data it was based on I will delete it. See more by clicking ALT. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population
Here are the correlations between consecutive decades that moved me doubt the measure of percent Southern Baptist by decade form 1980 through 2020: 0.9979 0.9978 0.9962 0.9951 Since there is no way that something measuring human behavior every ten years on the state level would be correlated at this high a level, I moved to looking for another way to measure the level of Southern Baptist participation by state. I turned to the on-line Yellow pages and collected the number of Southern Baptist churches listed in each state. It only took about an hour to do this and it only measures it five years after the 1980 through 2020 time period covered so it is not problem free. But the scatter plot shows it is consistently a better measure than that produced for each decade. I am now working with this measure of the state level of Southern|Baptist and death rates over the last few years. When that is done, I will post those findings. Since the one post I made several days ago was based on the data with this problem, I am going to delete that post if possible.
October 3, 2025 at 2:31 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Trump is operating form stereotypes based of the United States' fascist ideology that happens to be anti city and pro rural. Well, here are the age 10-64 and 65-84 deaths rates from 1999-2020 for the census's six urbanization levels. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
First the basic pattern, the more urbanized the lower the Non-Hispanic White aged 20-64 death rates and the less they increased over the last two decades. But they all have increased. The only two lines of dots to cross over this time are the metropolitan central metros versus the large fringe metro. The largest suburbs started out doing the best but they have been passed by the largest central cities. The most noticeable pattern is that the distance between the most rural and most urbanized has just about doubled over this time. Now the other thing I can think about that might be contributing to this is the more urbanized an area, the more Democratic it is. Another factor is Trump seems to be pushing health care to close more hospitals in the most rural areas, aka, the most Republican voting areas. But the main point is that these death rates should not have been going up during this time. The most common mortality pattern in the industrialized world during these years has been a declining death rate. The other graph uses the exactly same methods but the population is aged 65-84. This is not the first time I have compared death rate trends for our capitalist health insurance versus our most socialized health care, Medicare. But this is the first time I have shown it broken down by levels of urbanization. I have to end this with 2020 data because I can't get the same for later years yet. Here the large fringe metro area dominates the bottom line and the gap between them and the next one is much larger than the gap for any of the middle aged neighboring lines of mortality dots. Here we also have some increases in the distance between the top and bottom line over time, but it is much less pronounced here than among the middle aged. Well, I can't think of anything else to write except: Eschew Obfuscation.
September 30, 2025 at 11:29 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I allow you to compare how big an effect the amount a state spends per-capita on health care to state percent Southern Baptist are related to state age 20-64 death rates in 2023. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
I have a bad habit of only looking at strong relationships between variables, this is the exception. Here, r=-0.05, b=-.002. The surprising thing is this graph shows the relationship between how much the state spends per person for health care and and the state's age 20-64 death rate. If you look hard at that blue line running through the middle of the graph you can see that it is going down a little as the amount spent on health care increases from about $8,000 to $14,000 per year. OK, look at the other graph and see how the effect percent Southern Baptist compares. Here is one variable that as far as I know I am the only one to relate to state death rates. Here the r=0.75 and b=4.8. If you moved from the hypothetical state with no Southern Baptist, the predicted death rate for age 20-64 would be 173.3 while the state with 100% Southern Baptist has a predicted death rate of 653.7. Steven Woolf, the person I consider the major researcher of United States mortality gave up trying to explain the United States high death rate because he could not statistically explain it. I think he would have succeeded if he had added percent Southern Baptist to his multiple regression equation.
September 27, 2025 at 12:20 AM
pecanjim.bsky.social
A lot of Non-Hispanic Whites death rates for aged 50-54 from 1999-2000. The major problem with this graph is that most readers will have difficulty figuring out which line applies to them. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
As I look at this graph the major thing I see is that rural to metropolitan differences in death rates have grown dramatically during the last couple of decades. The large central city population is the only one to experience any declining death rates and those are mostly in the last half of the graph before COVID hit in the last year. Next to them in doing well is the large city suburbs, which essentially bounced around the same level all the time. The others have generally increased and the more rural the larger the increase. Just look at the difference between the top and bottom dots in 1999 with 2019, the last year before COVID hit cause that last bump up. Does this look like what the people in the country that spend the most for health care should be getting for their money? As a side note, Canadians spend just a little over half as much as people in the United States does for health care and their life expectancy is 3.2 years longer than ours. I know many of you will not be able to figure out which line describes where you live you can go to the below link to get the technical description, my feeling is it will only help some of you to know which line fits where you live: https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/ucd.html#2013%20Urbanization The major differences between this graph and some similar ones I have posted early is this one is limited to Non-Hispanic Whites aged 50-54 and it shows the most increase in differences between levels of urbanization.
September 25, 2025 at 5:01 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
The numbers on this map show the percent of a state's age 0-84 2021-2023 deaths that would not have happened if the state experienced Canada's age grouped death rates for the same years. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think
These are simple numbers, the percent of each state's deaths in 2021 through 2023, that would not have happened if the state had experienced Canada's age specific death rates for the same years. Need I say more?
September 24, 2025 at 1:40 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here I look at the relationship between state percent attending church at four levels of frequency of attendance and state total 2023 death rate in four graphs.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
Here you can see the line showing the regression analysis relationship between state level of weekly church attendance and total population's deaths per 100,000. The correlation, r, = .48 with a regression coefficient of 7.98. and a predicted death rate for the hypothetical state with no one attending church weekly of 749.4 per 100,000 in 2023. The predicted death rate for the hypothetical state with 100% weekly church attendance is 1557.1 deaths per 100,000. Go to the next graph to see how the monthly church attenders are predicted to die. Here the predicted death rate for the hypothetical state state with no monthly church attenders. is 928.4 deaths per 100,000. The regression coefficient, b, of 3.42 means that goes up 3.42 deaths per 100,000 for each additional percent who attend monthly and the hypothetical state that has 100 percent attending monthly adds 341.8 deaths to the predicted at zero percent or 1270.2 deaths per. 100,000. In reality this is a weak relationship, just look how close to level that line in the scatter-plot is. Now to people who attend about once a year in the next graph. When we have people who attend less than monthly but at least once a year, the line clearly goes down. In fact it goes down so much with each increase in the percent attending church yearly that a prediction at 100% is too unrealistic to even use to suggest the magnitude of the effect. But in general, compared to the people who attend church more often hitting church on Christmas or Easter seems to be a good way to go. Now to the complete non-attenders. Here is the last graph, the total non-church goers. The correlation, r = -.33 with an intercept of 1200.1 and a slope, b, of -4.97. The predicted death rate for the hypothetical population of 100 percent non-church goers is 703.1, essentially 500 deaths below the intercept, the predicted value for no non-church goers. The underlying question is what causes the positive relationship between weekly church attendance and the higher death rate. I think the cause is the use of prayer for health care among the Southern Baptist. Back when Obama care was passed, the religious fundamentalist managed to get the new law to allow them to provide health care, including their own health insurance policies. The research problem is that it is just an indirectly measured variable. From contact with neighbors in rural Alabama, I know it exists but I have no way of measuring it. My recommendation is to move to government funded total health care that eliminates the profit motive to deny care. But it will not happen during the Trump administration.
September 22, 2025 at 8:31 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is the death rates from 1999 through 2020 for six levels of urbanization for non-Hispanic-Whites ages 20-64 and 65-84. This is similar to a couple of earlier graphs but here I estimate the age 20-64 lives saved if they changed like the elderly. 🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
I am starting with the elderly graph because under Medicare/Medicaid they experienced generally good declining death rates. The most noticeable thing is how levels of urbanization showed that the more urbanized the better they did over time. I can only guess about what is going on but I think the denied health care during the middle ages left a low of the new elderly physically damaged as they managed to live long enough to die as elderly. I need to put measuring these excess deaths as numbers on my to do list. Now look at the middle aged graph. A final note, I have to end these with the 2020 data because the data for later years does not include the total population or death rates with the data for the levels of urbanization. Now looking at age 20-64 by these six levels of urbanization we can see that the pattern of the more rural the higher the death rate has existed in this age group since 1999 and most likely well before then. We just don't have data to look at this difference before then. In the four least urbanized ares, being ranked by urbanization does not change during this 22 years. But for non-Hispanic Whites aged 22-64 the suburbs of the largest central cities start with lower death rates and keep getting closer to their central cities until passing them in 2014 and they kept getting worse until the data ends in 2020. The major difference is these middle age death rates consistently increased from 1999 through 2020 while their elderly, generally their parents, consistently declined until COVID hit. If they had experienced the same percent change as the age 65-84, the 9,645,421 deaths they experienced would have been 7,108,610. That is 2,537,811 or 26.3% fewer middle aged deaths. Now our real problem is Trump is proposing that we take the main cause of our middle age high and increasing death rates, having patients get health insurance approval before getting care, added to our elderly care. If our health care system was interested in keeping people alive rather than decreasing the cost of health care, we would be moving the middle age into Medicare and getting rid of profit motive driven heath care like all those countries who are spending less than we do for health while living longer. Again I use the example of our northern neighbor, Canada. In the last year of data they spend just a couple of hundred dollars more than half as much as we do for health care and the CIA ranked their life expectancy 5h while ranking us 49th in life expectancy. The gap between 5th and 49th was 3.2 years.
September 20, 2025 at 2:50 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Of all the age group death rates, this age 25-34 if the most unexplainable. I have tried many independent variables and those related to younger and older groups are not related to this one. Why? Click ALT to see more. 🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News
First some things about this age groups death rate. When I looked at the single year age groups changes in death rates since 1999, this is the group that is at the top of the graph showing the change in death rates since 1999. Second, since variables related to other age groups changes in death rates don't predict this one, it is the most statistically unexplainable. Why? Well, I can find no statistical explanation. I have hypothesized that it is due to health insurance companies denying care because they use the software developed to predict future health problems to predict who they would lose money on. Then they deny care or cancel policies to avoid paying for health care for the people they expect to lose money on. Research wise, the problem is there is no state level data on the number of people the health insurance companies deny care for. The only way I could test this is if we got universal socialized health care and my hypothesis that the early middle aged death rates would decline would be tested. But, unfortunately in looking at the future, Trump is aiming at adding the current middle aged health care denial to Medicare/Medicaid. In predicting the future I can only predict an end to our elderly death rate declines and predict that Trump adding approval of paying for health will cause an increase in elderly death rates in future years.
September 17, 2025 at 11:29 PM
pecanjim.bsky.social
Here is the best graph I have put together so far, it misses the Southern Baptist effect, but it shows al lot about what is going on. The problem is it is hard to understand, each dot is an r between deaths at a single year age/sex/party group and year.
As a clue, at ages 16-18, death rates were consistently going down, around age 30 consistently going up and from ages 35 through 64 things were very different by party and sex. Finally after age 65 death rates were consistently going down for about everyone.
September 16, 2025 at 5:15 PM