We seek to quantify the years of life lost due to COVID-19 in California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico and South Dakota using race and geography specific (county or state) life expectancy.
- Life expectancy data: https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/app/georgia/2021/downloads
- GA race and population demographic data: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-counties-detail.html
- Georgia person-level death data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1naiRW57-uPggIPpDN5OFKwcBfCokiyxh0YgW1iCdLD0/edit#gid=0
- State level death data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e4jogN9bryY8Odb2AaIavLNN-MnMU3hsdeQTWeVhCRo/edit#gid=1019753044
- High Hispanic life expectancy in some counties might be due to the Hispanic mortality paradox, small populations within counties, and/or right-censoring of the data.
- in the state_yll.xlsx, weighted mean age was calculated using the 2000 US standard age distribution (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jl3q8Bi20pUrgIzLcAaa_SuTBnHDa4_IWXjmwOaD4Gg/edit#gid=70539333)
- The life expectancy data we used was county or state-level. This may obscure variation occuring within those geographic units.
- Life expectancy data is subject to right-censoring (https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201549) which may result in overestimates, especially in small counties.
- Although it is standard to recode race and ethnicity as we did, these assignments may not match how individuals identify or how they experience the world.
- In the death data from Georgia, anyone over 90 was categorized as being 90 years old. For groups whose life expectancy was over 90, this could result in overestimating years of potential life lost, because the deaths of anyone 91 or older will be categorized as occuring when they were younger (90).
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Miriam Chappelka
Charlotte Minsky
Alice Goldfarb