* Thorfinn has been on a tear at GNXP.
* John Goodman on the health minimum wage.
* Razib Khan on “the Hispanic Paradox,” which could also be labeled the non-Southern rural non-Hispanic white paradox:
What you see on the map on the broad purple swaths are the echoes of the Yankee Empire, and the New England Diaspora, which includes the Mormons of Utah. Yankee probity seems to have attracted Scandinavians, Germans, Irish, and Italians, of like mindset. Or the children of immigrants were acculturated to Yankee values.
What is the moral here? Economic development is broadly indicative of life expectancy, but in modern developed societies culture and social milieu matters on the margin, and can swamp the effects of economics. Just as heritability for height is higher in developed societies, so variation in life expectancy within developed societies may be more likely to track cultural categories than economics.
This seems like an important thing to keep in mind.