Florida’s governor is now Trump’s major challenger for the Republican nomination and Trump is probably going to pick up politically fatal criminal convictions. In Florida the governor has ignored Florida’s high death rates as he campaigns for president. This graph shows the issue he, and the rest of Florida, need to deal with, Florida’s high death rate. This graph focuses on the white death rate because Florida’s whites need to know that they are paying the major cost of Republican’s controlling state government, a very high middle aged white death rate.
This graph shows that that Florida’s white death rate is very much higher than the very Democratic state, California. I will make three comparisons to keep this short and readable.
First that star showing the percentage for 26 year olds, shows that for this age group, Florida’s death rate is 150% of California’s. In other words the number of 27 year olds that it takes to experience 100 deaths in California, experienced 150, the dot is three points above the 147 line, in Florida.
Next that cluster of seven dots around age 40. White Floridians in this group experience 180% of Californians death rate or simply put the size of this middle age population that produces 100 deaths in California produces 180 in Florida.
Next, I calculated how many deaths non-Hispanic whites in Florida aged 25-64 would have experienced if they had California’s death rate for the same population. That is, all the dots would have been on that 100% line. Their total deaths for 2018 through 2021 was 210,266. If they had experienced the same race and single year age deaths rates as California that would have been 165,692. That is 44,574 or 21.2% fewer. In other words if Florida had experienced California’s middle aged non-Hispanic death rates a little more than one in five of their deaths would not have happened. Their funeral industry would be unhappy.
Dr. James H. Gundlach, Professor Emeritus, Sociology, Auburn University
aka pecanjim, I roast my green coffee beans over a pecan wood fire in a camp fire popcorn popper