New York City Raises Smoking Age to 21

Bloomberg Pushes Cigarettes From NYC

In the time that Michael Bloomberg has been mayor of New York, many health related reforms have been pushed through the city council. Many of these proposals have been unpopular at times, but overall they appear to have paid off. Bloomberg has passed many new laws aimed at targeting everything from high-calorie foods in restaurants, to cigarettes to sugary drinks and has encouraged active lifestyles through the creation of bike lanes throughout the city. The following graph shows the increase in life expectancy of residents of both NYC and Boston over the past several decades. Notice how fast life expectancy has risen in NYC since Bloomberg was elected in 2001.

Now surely not all of these gains can be directly attributed to Bloomberg's progressive health policies, but they certainly have not hurt the city. 

Waging War on Cigarettes

The current controversial proposal that is making it's way through the city is a measure that would raise the purchasing age of cigarettes within the city to 21 years. Right now the federal minimum age is 18 and New York would be the largest city to raise the limit to 21. Already cigarettes can cost upwards of $14 per pack within the city thanks to aggressive taxes. In the 10 years between 2002 and 2012, smoking rates within New York City plummeted from 22% to 14%, much faster than the national drop. The proposal to raise the age to 21 passed last night in the city council. 

Before complaining about the restrictiveness of personal freedom from the new law, consider the health effects just of smoking. Take a look at the drop in life expectancy that can be attributed to smoking.

Can we really argue that restricting access to cigarettes is a bad thing for New York or for society as a whole? It seems to me that Bloomberg's new proposal will continue the upward trend of health that is emerging in New York. 

Hidden Costs of Commuting

How Commuting Hurts Us

In 2012 the average American spent about 25 minutes commuting to work every day each way. Some lucky Americans can get to work in 5 to 10 minutes, while others have to spend upwards of an hour commuting each way. Often we write off our commutes as something that does not matter and will not affect our quality of life, but this simply is not the case.

This map shows most of southern New England commute times. Lighter colors represent shorter commutes and tend to cover areas of cities while more suburban areas tend to be shaded by darker colors. Living further from the city center has a strong relationship with increased commute times.

Does Commuting Really Matter?

Yes. Let's do the math. If you are an "average" commuter you will spend 50 minutes per day moving from place to place. This may not sound bad on it's own, but if you extrapolate this over a typical 50 working week per year 40 year career, you have wasted 347 days commuting to and from work, the equivalent of almost an entire year. 

Long commutes also correlate with higher health risks. An article from The New York Times showed that longer commutes correlate with high blood pressure, obesity and cardiovascular disease. And interestingly enough, in Manhattan where people have some of the shortest and most active commutes, the average person weighs 7 pounds less than the average American. 

Just Think

Sometimes it is not possible to eliminate a long commute, but we often have more choice in our lives than we realize. Rather than ignoring the effect of a commute on your own personal well being, I ask that before making a decision about where to work or live, you at least consider how you will feel about spending so much time commuting every day. 

Fast-Food "Recovery" into Poverty

Since the end of the last recession, unemployment has fallen from over 10% to around 7.4%. While this is generally good news, many of the newly created jobs since 2010 have come in low-wealth industries such as fast food. In fact, growth in the fast-food industry has been faster than that of any other industry; employment has expanded by over 10% in the past three years. More than 100 cities now see these workers striking for higher wages. The average wage for a fast food employee in the United States is around $8.50 per hour, not nearly enough to live on. The central theme of this strike is to request a wage of $15 per hour.

Given the fact that last year McDonalds reaped after-tax profits of around 6.5 billion dollars, they could probably afford to pay their employees a bit more. 

But I'm more concerned with the bigger picture here. The healthiest portion of our economy happens to be the sector that arguably contributes most to making us unhealthy. Obesity rates continue to rise and yet more and more fast food jobs are created. We know that American need to lose weight, but our new jobs simply expand unhealthy options for Americans. This seems like a huge paradox.

Furthermore, the jobs are not good for the employees either! (Even those who choose not to eat the food) Working for a fast food restaurant where you make close to minimum wage will not allow you to improve your life, it will keep you in poverty. As far as I see it, McDonalds and other unhealthy fast-food chains are almost like a collective black hole. 

These jobs are actually making the country much worse. Employees have almost no opportunity for upward mobility and end up trapped in poverty, patrons use these businesses as a way to become fat and unhealthy and yet the economy grows. Something has to change here. We as a country need to learn to look more into economic numbers and realize what they really mean. A country that grows fatter by the day while expanding low wage job options is not a country heading in a positive direction.

Universal Healthcare will keep us Alive Longer

Healthcare Increases Life Expectancy

To finish my series on healthcare and life expectancy, I wanted to write one more article about heath insurance. First I should start by saying that the United States is among one of the only developed countries without universal healthcare. In this same group of countries, our life expectancy numbers appear low and our growth has been much slower.

People can engage in political battles over "Obamacare," Medicare and Medicaid and I will not pass judgement. I just want to provide some information that might help you to form your opinion. I want to show you on a county by county basis what percentages of Americans lack health insurance. When I say lack health insurance, I will give a real world example. You feel a lump in your arm and are concerned so you go to the doctor. The doctor tells you that she needs to run some blood work and remove a piece of your lump for a biopsy. The blood work will cost $450 and the biopsy $900. You have a car that costs $300 per month and your mortgage costs $1,000. What will you buy this month?

Now, let's take a look at the numbers.

Notice anything? The Northeast and Midwest seem to have the best rates of health insurance coverage. Notice the South, specifically Florida, Texas and New Mexico. Many parts of these states have between 30 - 50% uninsured residents!

Now my favorite graph of life expectancy by county. Take a good look at this if you haven't already seen it in my last two articles.

Look at these maps on a county by county basis and notice the general trends. Higher rates of health insurance coverage tend to mean longer life expectancy. I feel that it is generally safe to infer that as "Obamacare" takes effect, people currently without insurance will start to live longer.

One more quick thing I want to discuss is the fact that America wastes billions of dollars each year on health related costs, much of this waste is generated because not everyone has access to preventative care. If the health insurance system functions properly, Americans will have access to preventative care and tax money will be saved on costly late in the game procedures that are used to save lives.

How a Fat Paycheck Can Buy You 20 More Years of Life

Wealthier American Live Longer

Yesterday I wrote about how Americans in some parts of the country live for 82 years, while in other parts only live for about 62 years, if you need a refresher check out my post here. Today I plan on overlaying life expectancy statistics with those of other factors such as income and obesity. I will start by showing the change in life expectancy over time.

1985 Life Expectancy

2010 Life Expectancy

The first thing that I want to point out is the dramatic change in the map between 1985 and 2010, sort of. In almost every area of the country, life expectancy rose by over ten years during this period. But now focus on Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana and notice that these numbers barely budged. In a few counties in these states, life expectancy actually declined in the 25 year period.

Obesity statistics are not as widely available for the whole country dating back to 1985, but even the following map from 2010 should be telling.

American Obesity by County 2010

Notice that the three states with the lowest life expectancies are also the states shown in the darkest red coloring on this new map. In red counties, more than a third of adults are obese; if we include people who are simply overweight this number approaches 70%. It appears that obesity does directly relate to shorter life expectancies. America has become more obese over time and much of the increase has been concentrated in the south. It seems as though some of the gains in medical technologies nationwide are being offset in the south by increasing obesity rates.

Finally let's examine income. This map is from 2008 and shows median income by county. I think you will notice a trend here.

2008 Median Income by County

Once again it appears clear that there is an almost direct relationship between higher incomes and longer life. Almost all of the counties with life expectancies below 70 in the United States fall below average on the median income scale. 

One way to tie all of this together is the fact that it is much cheaper to buy unhealthy food than healthy food. People living on lower incomes are more likely to eat cheaper and thus less healthy which in turn can correlate with a spike in obesity. If you want to learn more about obesity and food access, check out this link.

To continue this series on health, I will further investigate medical costs and differences within healthcare itself and report back tomorrow with more information.