Center on Society and Health Blog

The mortality rate for women is rising for many US counties

A new paper out of the the journal Health Affairs exams how the mortality rate (the number of deaths per persons) of United States counties has changed between 1992 to 2006.  The authors found that nearly half (42.8%) of all counties had a higher mortality rate among women in 2006 than they had in 1992.  Only 3.4% of counties in 2006 had a higher mortality rate for men than in 1992.  The map below shows the changes in county mortality rate for women.

Source: Kindig DA, Cheng ER. Even as mortality fell in most US counties, female mortality nonetheless rose in 42.8 percent of counties from 1992 to 2006
Source: Kindig DA, Cheng ER. Even as mortality fell in most US counties, female mortality nonetheless rose in 42.8 percent of counties from 1992 to 2006

The authors looked at a number of factors such as health care access, behaviors, race/ethnicity, income, and education in order to identify trends in the counties experiencing higher mortality.  Other than the region in which the county was located, the most significant factor associated with an increase in mortality across the time frame was the percentage of adults with a college degree.  According to the authors, low rates of college educated adults had a stronger association with mortality than the percentage of people that smoke or the obesity rate.

Previous published research, shows that many Americans believe that the most significant factor in predicting health is individual behavior and access to health care.  Somewhat surprisingly, the authors found the rate of people without health insurance and the number of doctors per population did not significantly predict whether or not the mortality rate would increase over this time period. The factors most associated according to the study were socioeconomic rather than health care related.