Deadliest Places to Live in U.S.

Experts Map the Highest and Lowest Death Rates by County

By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News

Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD

Dec. 13, 2007 -- Death favors some parts of the U.S. more than others, and it's been that way for at least 35 years, a new study shows.

"There's no easy way to explain, so far, how death is rooted in place. But place matters; that's clearly the case," Mississippi State University's Jeralynn Sittig Cossman, PhD, says in a news release.

Cossman and colleagues report persistent variation in death rates among the nation's counties from 1968 to 2002.

During that time, death rates were higher than the national average in some counties in Nevada and in the South, and lower than average in some counties in the Upper Great Plains region.

Migration trends, such as young people leaving rural counties, doesn't fully account for the findings.

For instance, the Upper Great Plains has experienced hard economic times and young people leaving for other parts of the country, but the region's death rates are still lower than other regions.

It will take more work to figure out how much of the trend is due to people's behavior and how much is due to their environment.

Cossman's study appears in December's edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

SOURCES: Cossman, J. American Journal of Public Health, December 2007; vol 97: pp 2148-2150. News release, Mississippi State University.

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