Yes Hispanics live longer than Whites and African Americans but what about migrant workers? Is Real America as Sarah Palin puts it really better. Why then do kids leave Rural America for the Cities and Suburbs? But thats not the focus today I try and link why Migrant Farm Workers die so young to the surprisingly lower life spans of Rural America that nobody Dem or GOP talks about and I put forth my suspicion why as a topic for debate. I welcome more debate as to other causes so I can research them more.
The Hispanic Paradox is greater than we think. The Rural Paradox now needs to be studied.
As much as 30 percent of Northern California’s garlic harvesters are under-aged children. Kids as young as six years old have voted in state-conducted union elections since they qualified as workers.
Some 800,000 under-aged children work with their families harvesting crops across America. Babies born to migrant workers suffer 25 percent higher infant mortality than the rest of the population.
Malnutrition among migrant worker children is 10 times higher than the national rate.
Farm workers’ average life expectancy is still 49 years –compared to 73 years for the average American
United farm Workers
Despite these numbers Hispanics still live longer than Whites or African Americans even though we tend to be poorer and have less access to healthcare.
Now here is the Real Shocker
The mortality rates of first-generation immigrants are consistently better than that of U.S.-born Hispanics. But he said the difference between these groups is seldom statistically significant.
In 2007, the Public Policy Institute of California found that the average lifespan of a Hispanic man in that state is 77.5 years, compared to 75.5 among white males and 68.6 among black males. The lifespan of Hispanic men was topped only by Asian men, whose average lifespan came in at 80.4.
In 2008, the National Center for Health Statistics released a study showing that the overall mortality rate for Hispanics in 2006 was 550 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 778 for whites, and 1,001 for blacks.
Hispanic Business
So then first generation Hispanics live longer than second and third etc generation Hispanics despite farm workers many of whom are first generation immigrants dying at 49 years of age!
Sean Hannity loves to brag that America has the best healthcare in the world but just how good can that healthcare be if the people with the least access to that healthcare live longer than you do?
Also one must wonder about the chemicals we use on farms.
While mortality rates in the United States overall have declined over the past few decades, mortality rates in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas have diverged since the early 1990s. Figure 6 shows that, since 1990, non-metropolitan mortality has declined at an average annual rate of only 0.73 percent, significantly slower than the metropolitan rate of 1.27 percent.
White House Council of Economic Advisers
Sarah Palin’s Real America should check their ground water for farm chemicals its not just Immigrant Farm Workers dying even people with Healthcare die.
Are Farms now more polluted than cities? Higher death rates for Hispanic farm Workers at ground zero for chemical exposure and to a lesser rate the higher death rate for non Hispanic Rural Americans than Urban People would seem to support that conclusion.
I am open to other explanations but I can’t think of any. The Hispanic Paradox suggests we would live much longer if our Farm Workers were removed from our average.
The until now unknown Rural Paradox is that we assume Rural People who have access to fresh farm food eat less Processed Food/Fast Food. We know that as a percentage they work more physical labor jobs as opposed to urban desk jobs thus getting more exercise which is healthy, we assume the air is fresher but Red States which tend to have more rural areas also tend to have very lax pollution control laws and under the 8 years of Bush I do not trust those pollution numbers.
What farm chemicals or other changes that started in the early 1990′s could explain Rural America’s higher Death rates compared to Urban People? For Hispanic Farm workers chemical exposure especially for child Farm Workers and Malnutrition seems to explain the much higher death rate.
For Rural America more study is needed. Lets hope that today’s politicians Dem and GOP will start talking about this issue when they go to Rural areas looking for votes.