Minnesotans Live Longer

Any time you put enough statisticians in a room with lots of data, they will find a pattern. In the United States, life expectancy researchers have noticed a new pattern emerging: Minnesotans and people in the Upper Great Plains are living longer than expected, if you go by national averages. The trick is to figure out if this is just random chance, or if there is something about Minnesota that increases longevity.

Doing a county-by-county comparison of people throughout the United States over a 35-year period, researchers found that Minnesotans are doing surprisingly well. In fact, the counties in Minnesota make up a big cluster of low mortality data. Why? We don’t know.

When doing anything statistical, you can expect some random cluster of data, but the counties in Minnesota and the Upper Great Plains having lower than expected mortality year-after-year implies that something else is going on.

Does Minnesota Have the Fountain of Youth?

Probably not. The difference in longevity is not tremendous, only more than one would expect if everything was equal. Could there be something about Minnesota that helps people live longer? Maybe. Expect to see more detailed studies aimed at trying to figure this pattern out in the future.

_Source(s):

Jeralynn Sittig Cossman, PhD, Ronald E. Cossman, PhD, Wesley L. James, MS, Carol R. Campbell, MS, Troy C. Blanchard, PhD and Arthur G. Cosby, PhD. Persistent Clusters of Mortality in the United States. December 2007, Vol 97, No. 12 | American Journal of Public Health 2148-2150