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Brief thread on a really cool new study that just came out: washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
Most of us are familiar, at this point, with the standard nationwide life expectancy map. Life expectancies are shorter in the south and higher in the upper midwest. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/… 
But we know these differences aren't just a function of geography. They reflect the characteristics of the people who live there, the collective accumulation of years of behavioral, social, economic and health differences.
Wouldn't it be cool if we could disentangle the geographic effects from everything else? To isolate the *true* effect of place on mortality? That's exactly what this study aims to do. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
The authors used a dataset of millions of Medicare recipients, and used differences between people who moved after age 65 and those who did not to isolate the effect of place. This is what they arrived at: washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
This map shows what would happen to the life expectancy of a senior of average health if they moved to a given geographic area. Some places literally take months off your life. Others add them, up to a year or more. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
There are many potential reasons for this, which is a subject for future research. But they offer some initial correlations to get the ball rolling. Places that extend life have more and higher quality health services, and fewer extremes of temperature. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
Anyway the study is pretty cool because in the past we were always like "well it's not like moving to a specific place will make you live longer." This research, however, suggests that that can indeed happen, albeit on a very limited scale. washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
