Move South, Live Longer : The Frontal Cortex

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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, and the New York Times and is a contributor to Radiolab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.

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Move South, Live Longer

Category: Culture
Posted on: August 7, 2007 1:19 PM, by Jonah Lehrer

It turns out that moving to the sun belt will help you live longer. Here's the NBER abstract:

We estimate that the number of annual deaths attributable to cold temperature is 27,940 or 1.3% of total deaths in the US. This effect is even larger in low income areas. Because the U.S. population has been moving from cold Northeastern states to the warmer Southwestern states, our findings have implications for understanding the causes of long-term increases in life expectancy. We calculate that every year, 5,400 deaths are delayed by changes in exposure to cold temperature induced by mobility. These longevity gains associated with long term trends in geographical mobility account for 8%-15% of the total gains in life expectancy experienced by the US population over the past 30 years. Thus mobility is an important but previously overlooked determinant of increased longevity in the United States.

A rare upside to global warming?

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Comments (6)

This is really one for the no-shit files and is only an effective public health suggestion if you ignore everything else about the south. Yes, if you move south you are less likely to die in the cold. What a shock.

However, the south overall has higher death rates, and poorer metrics of health in almost every category from infant mortality to violent crime to car accidents.

Trust me, I live here. You may get more sun, but you might also get runover by a crazy redneck in Georgia driving 100 MPH on a 70MPH road in an SUV while not wearing his seatbelt, beating his pregnant wife, as he rushes to a distant hospital that performs worse than any other in the country (outside of Mississippi at least).

Posted by: MarkH | August 7, 2007 3:08 PM

Let's not forget the goodness of deep-fried everything. Mmmmm.

Posted by: Ted | August 7, 2007 7:03 PM

As someone who grew up in a frozen wasteland, I'm willing to bet that sliver of the population that can't take the cold represents people who already moved north from somewhere habitable. You know, the people who simply refuse to wear a warm hat because it messes up their hair, or won't put on a fourth layer because it makes them look fat. Northern winter isn't for the fashionable.

You may get more sun, but you might also get runover by a crazy redneck in Georgia driving 100 MPH on a 70MPH road in an SUV while not wearing his seatbelt, beating his pregnant wife, as he rushes to a distant hospital that performs worse than any other in the country (outside of Mississippi at least).

If I may... at least you know they're not on their way to get an abortion. Even if they were, they'd be headed to a backalley instead.

Posted by: Epistaxis | August 7, 2007 10:55 PM

Wow, hateful stereotyping. Plus, the "south" is referring to the southWEST, which last time I checked, doesn't contain Georgia.

Posted by: caribbeanwaffle | August 8, 2007 1:36 PM

They must have a pretty broad definition of "attributable to cold temperature" because there sure aren't 27,000 people freezing to death every year. Do they balance that against how many deaths are attributable to heat every year?

Posted by: Ed T | August 9, 2007 10:55 AM

If you look at the full text of the abstract, they appear to be saying that cold weather exposure has a *long-term longevity* impact:

"[...] we find that both extreme heat and extreme cold result in immediate increases in mortality. However, the increase in mortality following extreme heat appears entirely driven by temporal displacement, while the increase in mortality following extreme cold is long lasting. The aggregate effect of cold on mortality is quantitatively large."

Which is different than death from exposure. If this were true, one might expect to see a marked difference in life expectancy in a country such as finland (etc)

Posted by: rpsms | August 9, 2007 11:48 AM