Life Expectancy Trend by Socioeconomic Status (SES) in the Finger Lakes Region

People living in areas with lower socioeconomic status (SES) generally have worse health outcomes and life expectancy. While the life expectancy gap between the areas with the lowest and highest SES was slowly closing until 2013, that gap has since grown to be over 10 years in 2021. The impact of drug overdoses and COVID has led to areas of lower SES losing multiple years of life expectancy while areas of higher SES have seen little change or impact from these factors in the past 8 years. SES 5 (ZIP codes with highest SES) is the only group to have a higher life expectancy in 2021 than 2000.

Methodology note: The SES index ranking was developed by Common Ground Health and calculated using a variety of socioeconomic indicators from the American Community Survey including average income, poverty rates, education levels, housing value, and homeownership. Each ZIP code is assigned a socioeconomic (SES) index ranking from 1 to 5. The lower SES ZIP codes tend to have lower average income, higher poverty rates, lower prevalence of college degrees, etc.

Methodology note: Years of potential life lost (YPLL) is a widely used measure to assess the rate of premature mortality. YPLL places a larger weight on the deaths of younger people, in contrast with overall mortality statistics which are dominated by deaths of the elderly. The YPLL rates in Common Ground Health analyses are derived using 75 years as the baseline. A death at age 65 has YPLL of 10, where as a death at age 35 has a YPLL of 40. The rates are calculated per 100,000 population and are age-sex adjusted to account for differences in population distribution.