I often times like to wander around the internet, and see the opinions of fundamentalist Christians, who tend to sit on the far right of the political topics. I don’t tend to read much from the political left, because I’m more interested in challenging my existing ideas, and trying to see if I’m wrong about what I already believe.
There’s one Faceb**k group known as “The Conservative Hammer”, and on one post, about people being assaulted for wearing MAGA hats, somebody posted the above image. While I in no way support the idea of assaulting people because they wear stupidity on their head, the idea voting Democrat will turn the United States into a shithole seems to be wildly off base. Given how fundamentalists are often disconnected from reality, I’m none too surprised about this.
When I think of American shitholes, that is places I wouldn’t ever want to live, the states that pop into my head are Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. Given the choice of any state in the union, these would be very low on my list. On the other hand, if I wanted to think of the states I’d most want to live in, my choices would probably be something like New York, Washington, or Massachusetts, which are firmly “blue” states. Now, this may just be my own personal bias showing itself, but we can look at these states based on a few important metrics, like life expectancy, child mortality, average income.
According to World Population Review, the following states are considered firmly “red” states: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. While the following are firmly “blue” states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
Let’s look at those states, marked in either red or blue, and how they rank on these metrics. Note that the Life Expectancy, and Average Income, statistics include US territories, but the Child Mortality column does not.
| State |
Life Expectancy
(Age) |
Average Income
(US Dollars) |
Child Mortality
(Deaths / 100,000) |
| Alabama |
74.9 (53) |
$48,123 (47) |
9.6 (47) |
| Alaska |
77.8 (37) |
$73,181 (8) |
6.1 (14) |
| California |
80.9 (3) |
$71,805(9) |
5.6 (8) |
| Connecticut |
80.6 (6) |
$74,168 (6) |
6.0 (13) |
| Delaware |
78.2 (28) |
$62,852 (18) |
9.4 (46) |
| Hawaii |
81.5 (1) |
$77,765 (4) |
6.6 (18) |
| Idaho |
79.0 (23) |
$52,225 (41) |
6.2 (17) |
| Illinois |
79.0 (23) |
$62,992 (17) |
7.8 (36) |
| Kansas |
78.2 (28) |
$56,422 (31) |
7.6 (33) |
| Maryland |
78.8 (25) |
$80,776 (2) |
7.4 (30) |
| Massachusetts |
79.9 (8) |
$77,385 (5) |
5.4 (6) |
| Minnesota |
80.7 (4) |
$68,388 (13) |
5.2 (4) |
| Montana |
76.9 (43) |
$53,386 (38) |
7.1 (27) |
| Nebraska |
79.1 (19) |
$59,970 (27) |
5.8 (9) |
| New Jersey |
80.4 (7) |
$80,088 (3) |
5.4 (5) |
| New Mexico |
77.7 (37) |
$46,744 (48) |
6.2 (16) |
| New York |
80.7 (4) |
$64,894 (15) |
6.0 (11) |
| North Dakota |
78.6 (26) |
$61,843 (19) |
6.2 (15) |
| Oklahoma |
75.4 (49) |
$50,051 (44) |
8.2 (40) |
| Oregon |
79.2 (19) |
$60,212 (21) |
5.9 (10) |
| Rhode Island |
79.3 (15) |
$63,870 (16) |
6.8 (23) |
| South Carolina |
76.2 (46) |
$50,570 (32) |
9.7 (49) |
| South Dakota |
78.1 (30) |
$56,521 (30) |
7.4 (29) |
| Tennessee |
76.0 (47) |
$51,340 (42) |
9.3 (45) |
| Utah |
76.0 (47) |
$65,358 (14) |
4.7 (1) |
| Vermont |
79.3 (15) |
$57,513 (28) |
6.7 (19) |
| Washington |
79.9 (8) |
$70,979 (11) |
5.2 (3) |
| Wyoming |
80.0 (31) |
$60,434 (20) |
7.0 (26) |
| Red Average |
77.4 |
$56,878.77 |
7.3 |
| Blue Average |
79.74 |
$68,028.73 |
6.37 |
So there are some interesting things that come out of this table. First, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that voting Democrat has anything to do with a state being a “shithole”, unless we start to consider other metrics. Looking at these numbers, Democratic states tend to have higher life expectancy, higher household incomes, and lower child mortality rates than Republican stronghold states.
What’s more interesting, is that looking at the data it seems that living in the Bible Belt is a pretty strong predictor of life expectancy, income, and child mortality. Bible Belt states generally score worse on these statistics than non-Bible belt states. This doesn’t surprise me, as I’ve long known about the correlation between religiosity and social dysfunction. I’ll note that I don’t think that religiosity is causing the social dysfunction, but is most likely a result of social dysfunction, as people adopt religion as a means of coping.
What is also interesting are some of the states that are missing from the table above, most notably Mississippi, and Arkansas, two states I tend to think of as “shitholes.” These two states tend to lean Republican when they vote, but are not as firmly entrenched with the Republican party, but the numbers are horrifying!
| Arkansas |
75.4 (49) |
$45,869 (50) |
8.0 (37) |
| Mississippi |
74.5 (55) |
$43,529 (51) |
11.5 (50) |
Both of these states have average household incomes well below the national average, while life expectancy is right at the bottom of US states, and have infant mortality rates that aren’t too good either. For states that typically vote Republican, it doesn’t seem to have done them a lot of good for creating places that people should want to live.
If I had to choose, I’d generally prefer to live in a “blue” state, with higher incomes, higher life expectancy, and lower child mortality, than live in a “red” state, where these metrics tend to be worse.
