Rural America's working-age adults die at wildly higher rates than their counterparts in cities. Why? [View all]

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Rural America’s working-age adults die at wildly higher rates than their counterparts in cities. Why?

Rural Americans ages 25 to 54 — considered the prime working-age population — are dying of natural causes such as chronic diseases and cancer at wildly higher rates than their age-group peers in urban areas, according to the report.

The USDA researchers analyzed mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from two three-year periods — 1999 through 2001, and 2017 through 2019. In 1999, the natural-cause mortality rate for rural working-age adults was only 6 percent higher than that of their city-dwelling peers. By 2019, the gap had widened to 43 percent.


The disparity was significantly worse for women — and for Native American women, in particular. The gap highlights how persistent difficulties accessing health care, and a dispassionate response from national leaders, can eat away at the fabric of rural communities.

A possible Medicaid link
USDA researchers and other experts noted that states in the South that have declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act had some of the highest natural-cause mortality rates for rural areas. But the researchers didn’t pinpoint the causes of the overall disparity.


Seven of the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid are in the South, though that could change soon because some lawmakers are rethinking their opposition, as KFF Health News previously reported.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ar-BB1lEcWm