The largest measurable force behind the region's shorter lives is a habit and the policy environment that let it persist.
Hi everyone. I was on YouTube as I am most days and I came across a video titled. Jordan Peeples', "I Exposed the Industry Killing the South," caught my attention. She's an economist, so I thought I'd share what I learned. Throughout the video, she points out that life expectancy in America increased in the second half of the 20th century. The gains did not reach all. In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper published in December 2025, Foote, Meara, Skinner and Stewart find that the life-expectancy gap between college-educated and non-college-educated adults increased from 2.6 years in 1992 to 6.3 years in 2019, and that mortality inequality at the county level increased by about 30 percent. College grads did well in nearly every category. But adults without a degree didn't, and location started to matter more.