More reasons to avoid the South

The proposition that Southerners live in substandard conditions has more empirical support:

March 6, 2011

Hawaii No. 1 in U.S. for Wellbeing, and West Virginia Last

Most Southern States Have Low Wellbeing

Ten Southern states have a Well-Being Index score that puts them in the lower range wellbeing group. There are also more states in the South with wellbeing scores in the lower range than there are throughout the rest of the country. Nevada, which is influenced by the poor wellbeing score in Las Vegas, is the only Western state with a lower range wellbeing score.

Many Western states, in contrast, shine in wellbeing, with 5 of the top 10 -- Hawaii, Wyoming, Alaska, Colorado, and Utah -- located in that region of the country.

Though in fairness to the data, the Rust Belt states of the Midwest don't do much better in the well being department than the Southern states.

And, probably not unrelated to the results of the Gallup poll:

Monday, March 7th, 2011

'Diabetes Belt' outlined
Region of high prevalence stretches across Deep South and Appalachia

A swath of the Deep South and Appalachia has emerged as the U.S. “diabetes belt,” researchers find. County-by-county mapping shows that the highest rates of diabetes cut two paths — one strung through Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, and another running eastward from Louisiana through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

The belt also touches parts of North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report online March 7 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. High-diabetes pockets crop up in Oklahoma, Michigan, Arizona, the Dakotas and elsewhere. The data do not distinguish between types of diabetes, but nationally more than 90 percent of diabetes cases are type 2, also called adult-onset diabetes.

I imagine the "high-diabetes pockets" in Arizona show up on Amerindian reservations. But overall, Arizona does better as a place to live than most Southern states. Given the South's higher religiosity than the rest of the U.S., the data don't support claims that religion makes societies more livable and results in greater well being.