How Zip Codes Determine Life Expectancy

Before I start, feel free to engage with other users and follow me! If you came here from Medium, I thank you. I will be having separate articles from Medium, so be sure to follow me here as well!

Where you are born and live determines how long you live. Imagine two twins are separated at birth and living in two different cities; one lives into their 90s, one into their 60s. Studies have shown that zip code can have a larger impact on your lifespan than DNA. What gives?

Health Disparities

Welcome to the world of health disparities. Throughout communities, states, and nations, healthcare varies. Humans, as a species, treat healthcare as a basic right, but it varies so much across the world that our lifespans can vary by decades. The answer, unfortunately, comes down to inequality. Poorer neighborhoods usually don’t have enough grocery stores, since residents can’t afford them. So, fast food is extremely prevalent, meaning residents will often not live as long. Compared to richer zip codes that are higher taxed, poor neighborhoods often have a Burger King, not a Kroger. And throughout the world, wealth varies, so quality of life does as well. Despite the social services of the Western world, being wealthy often correlates directly to a longer life. However, these poor areas can change often rapidly, especially when there is an influx of wealthy, affluent residents.

What is gentrification?

Gentrification is a social phenomenon occurring when wealthier, affluent people or families move from a wealthier area to a poorer area, therefore raising property values and taxes. This especially occurs in cities and can be harmful for residents of the original, poorer area. When taxes are driven up by affluent residents, poorer residents cannot afford the area anymore and are forced to leave. Gentrification worsens social and financial inequality in cities and all over the world when it occurs. However, gentrification can be beneficial: the tax revenue generated generally leads to better social services, improving life expectancy in poorer areas.

However, gentrification is generally regarded as a net negative: while it does make the community’s social services better, long-time and existing residents are unable to take advantage of benefits due to the much higher cost of living.

The Importance of Preventive Care

Preventive care is necessary to stop diseases before they pop up. By employing regular screenings, checkups, and vaccinations can put deadly diseases and painful conditions on the backburner. Preventive care has often been taken for granted, but the diseases it has stopped now formerly killed millions. Unfortunately, preventive care has become less and less valued. The work vaccines and screenings have done to catch diseases early or prevent them from ever occurring have been forgotten. Movements like the anti-vaccination movement have hurt medicine’s public perception overall but also left humanity vulnerable. Without screenings, checkups, and vaccines, people are more likely to catch needless disease. With vaccines, it is important to reach herd immunity; unfortunately, now that we have reached near-herd immunity for many diseases, the helpfulness of vaccines in healthcare has once again become undervalued.

What can be done?

It is important to advertise preventive care and encourage patients to receive it. Poorer communities often have worse preventive care options than more affluent ones, so organizing movements to get people vaccinated, screened, and have checkups for disease and help the life expectancy outlook for many underserved and less developed communities.

If you enjoyed this read, make sure to follow. If you want to have an impact on the world of health disparities, please consider donating to Partners in Health through the donation form on the homepage of this website. Thank you!