IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uersib/341639.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Nature of the Rural-Urban Mortality Gap

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas, Kelsey L.
  • Dobis, Elizabeth A.
  • McGranahan, David A.

Abstract

The 2019 age-adjusted natural-cause mortality (NCM) rate for the prime working-age population (aged 25–54) was 43 percent higher in rural (nonmetropolitan) areas than in urban (metropolitan) areas. This is a shift from 25 years ago when NCM rates in urban and rural areas were similar for this age group. As a first step to understanding the increasing gap between rural and urban NCM rates, this report examines natural (disease-related) deaths for prime working-age adults in rural and urban areas between 1999 and 2019 using data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiology Research (WONDER). Prime working age NCM rates are examined for the population as a whole, as well as by sex, race and ethnicity, region, and State. Overall, both an increase in the rural, prime working-age NCM rates and a decrease in the corresponding urban rates are contributing to the growing mortality gap.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas, Kelsey L. & Dobis, Elizabeth A. & McGranahan, David A., 2024. "The Nature of the Rural-Urban Mortality Gap," Economic Information Bulletin 341639, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uersib:341639
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.341639
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/341639/files/eib-265.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.341639?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Preston, S.H. & Stokes, A., 2011. "Contribution of obesity to international differences in life expectancy," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 101(11), pages 2137-2143.
    2. Miller, Charlotte E. & Vasan, Ramachandran S., 2021. "The southern rural health and mortality penalty: A review of regional health inequities in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    3. Jones, Carol Adaire & Parker, Timothy S. & Ahearn, Mary Clare & Mishra, Ashok K. & Variyam, Jayachandran N., 2009. "Health Status and Health Care Access of Farm and Rural Populations," Economic Information Bulletin 54430, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Anne Case & Angua Deaton, 2015. "Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century," Working Papers 15078.full.pdf, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    5. Pender, John & Kuhns, Maria & Yu, Cindy & Larson, Janice & Huck, Shirley, 2023. "Linkages Between Rural Community Capitals and Healthcare Provision: A Survey of Small Rural Towns in Three U.S. Regions," USDA Miscellaneous 333533, United States Department of Agriculture.
    6. Cossman, J.S. & James, W.L. & Cosby, A.G. & Cossman, R.E., 2010. "Underlying causes of the emerging nonmetropolitan mortality penalty," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 100(8), pages 1417-1419.
    7. James, W.L., 2014. "All rural places are not created equal: Revisiting the rural mortality penalty in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(11), pages 2122-2129.
    8. Cosby, A.G. & Neaves, T.T. & Cossman, R.E. & Cossman, J.S. & James, W.L. & Feierabend, N. & Mirvis, D.M. & Jones, C.A. & Farrigan, T., 2008. "Preliminary evidence for an emerging nonmetropolitan mortality penalty in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 98(8), pages 1470-1472.
    9. Stenberg, Peter L., 2018. "Rural Individuals’ Telehealth Practices: An Overview," Economic Information Bulletin 291929, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    10. Shannon M. Monnat, 2020. "Trends in U.S. Working-Age non-Hispanic White Mortality: Rural–Urban and Within-Rural Differences," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 39(5), pages 805-834, October.
    11. Samuel Preston & Andrew Stokes & Neil Mehta & Bochen Cao, 2014. "Projecting the Effect of Changes in Smoking and Obesity on Future Life Expectancy in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 27-49, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roth, Adam R. & Denney, Justin T. & Amiri, Solmaz & Amram, Ofer, 2020. "Characteristics of place and the rural disadvantage in deaths from highly preventable causes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 245(C).
    2. Wesley James & Jeralynn Cossman & Julia Wolf, 2018. "Persistence of death in the United States: The remarkably different mortality patterns between America’s Heartland and Dixieland," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(33), pages 897-910.
    3. Shannon M. Monnat, 2020. "Trends in U.S. Working-Age non-Hispanic White Mortality: Rural–Urban and Within-Rural Differences," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 39(5), pages 805-834, October.
    4. Nathan T. Dollar & Robert A. Hummer & Richard G. Rogers & Elizabeth M. Lawrence & Iliya Gutin & David B. Braudt & Samuel Fishman, 2020. "The persistent southern disadvantage in US early life mortality, 1965‒2014," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 42(11), pages 343-382.
    5. David McCarthy, 2021. "80 will be the new 70: Old‐age mortality postponement in the United States and its likely effect on the finances of the OASI program," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(2), pages 381-412, June.
    6. Miller, Charlotte E. & Vasan, Ramachandran S., 2021. "The southern rural health and mortality penalty: A review of regional health inequities in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    7. Allan, Rebecca & Williamson, Paul & Kulu, Hill, 2019. "Gendered mortality differentials over the rural-urban continuum: The analysis of census linked longitudinal data from England and Wales," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 68-78.
    8. Shannon M. Monnat, 2022. "Demographic and Geographic Variation in Fatal Drug Overdoses in the United States, 1999–2020," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 703(1), pages 50-78, September.
    9. Dmitri A. Jdanov & Vladimir M. Shkolnikov & Alyson A. van Raalte & Evgeny M. Andreev, 2017. "Decomposing Current Mortality Differences Into Initial Differences and Differences in Trends: The Contour Decomposition Method," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(4), pages 1579-1602, August.
    10. Shannon M. Monnat, 2019. "The Contributions of Socioeconomic and Opioid Supply Factors to Geographic Variation in U.S. Drug Mortality Rates," Working Papers Series 87, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    11. Elizabeth Lawrence & Robert A. Hummer & Kathleen Mullan Harris, 2017. "The Cardiovascular Health of Young Adults: Disparities along the Urban-Rural Continuum," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 672(1), pages 257-281, July.
    12. Alberto Palloni & Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, 2017. "The Impact of Obesity on Adult Mortality Assessment of Estimates with Applications," Working Papers WR-1193, RAND Corporation.
    13. Alberto Palloni & Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez, 2017. "The Impact of Obesity on Adult Mortality: Assessment of Estimates with Applications," Working Papers 2017-044, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    14. Robert Collinson & John Eric Humphries & Nicholas Mader & Davin Reed & Daniel Tannenbaum & Winnie van Dijk, 2024. "Eviction and Poverty in American Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(1), pages 57-120.
    15. Cohle, Zachary & Ortega, Alberto, 2023. "The effect of the opioid crisis on patenting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 493-521.
    16. Alexander Cheung & Joseph Marchand & Patricia Mark, 2022. "Loss of Life and Labor Productivity: The Canadian Opioid Crisis," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 703(1), pages 303-323, September.
    17. Abshire, Demetrius A. & Wippold, Guillermo M. & Wilson, Dawn K. & Pinto, Bernardine M. & Probst, Janice C. & Hardin, James W., 2023. "A qualitative study of ecological and motivational factors to inform weight management interventions for Black men in the rural South of the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    18. Matthew Calver, 2016. "Measuring the Appropriate Outcomes for Better Decision-Making: A Framework to Guide the Analysis of Health Policy," CSLS Research Reports 2016-03, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    19. Hippolyte d’Albis & Ikpidi Badji, 2021. "Intergenerational equity by educational attainments in France," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 38(4), pages 339-365, December.
    20. Wim Naudé, 2016. "Is European Entrepreneurship in Crisis?," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 14(03), pages 03-07, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health Economics and Policy; Labor and Human Capital; Risk and Uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uersib:341639. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ersgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.