A Columbus Dispatch article released last weekend presented data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on life expectancy for people living across Ohio.
One of the findings of the journalist was that the lowest-life-expectancy neighborhood in all of Ohio was located on the west side of Columbus. This neighborhood, which is approximately in the “south Franklinton” area, has a life expectancy of only 60 years.
This was poignant for me particularly because this neighborhood is directly adjacent to the neighborhood I live in. Just across the river in Columbus’s Brewery District, the life expectancy is 80 years. That is higher than even than the state average life expectancy of 78 years.
So this means that being born on my side of the river versus the other side of the river is worth 20 more years of life on average–a 34% increase in life expectancy.
What is driving this steep difference in life expectancies between one side of the river and the other? Something inescapable about this story is poverty. In south Franklinton, the Census Bureau estimates the poverty rate is about 62%--an astounding number. That means over half of the population of the neighborhood is living in poverty.
In the Brewery District? The estimated poverty rate is only 8%--low for Franklin County, low for Ohio, low for the United States. This means someone living in south Franklinton is 8 times as likely to live in poverty as someone living in the Brewery District.
This situation touches on a larger theme covered in a recent working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. In this paper, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, Northwestern University, and New York University discuss the state of the research on the connection between poverty and health. They talk about how poverty and health are associated not only between countries, but within countries as well.
One conclusion these researchers come to is that it is not income that drives poor health, but rather poverty. They find that life expectancy at age 40 and the share of middle-age adults reporting that they are in good health, have a health difficulty, or experience depression all improve as people gain more income but flatten at higher levels of income.
This fits a pattern we see throughout many economic phenomena: the pattern of diminishing marginal returns. An additional $10,000 of income will improve the health of members of a household that makes $30,000 of income much more than it will improve the health of members of a household making $250,000 of income.
Another conclusion they come to is that income is not the only factor driving health outcomes for people in poverty. They note that across different geographies, life expectancy is steady for the wealthy, but varies for the poor. This suggests geographic factors may be at play in impacting health outcomes for people with less resources.
We do have public policies that can lead to better health outcomes for people in poverty, though. The authors of the paper mention the research around cash transfers, early childhood education, and health care provision. Poverty is a risk factor for poor health, but tackling both poverty and poor health is something fully within the grasp of public policy. Well-designed public policy can stop a river from having a 20-year impact on people’s lives.