Description/Abstract
Rural mortality rates have been higher than urban mortality rates for decades in the United States. Now, higher COVID-19 mortality rates in rural areas threaten to exacerbate the existing rural mortality penalty. This brief shows that rural counties had higher average years of potential life lost than urban counties in both 2019 and 2020. However, the increase in YPLL between 2019 and 2020 was largest in small rural counties and large rural counties adjacent to metro areas. Federal, state, and local governments must target social, structural, and policy determinants of health and premature mortality that disproportionately affect rural residents.
Document Type
Data Slice
Keywords
COVID-19, Spatial Disparities
Disciplines
Demography, Population, and Ecology | Rural Sociology | Sociology
Date
11-9-2021
For More Information
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Sun, Yue, "Rural Counties Lost More Years of Life than Urban Counties in 2020" (2021). Population Health Research Brief Series. 159.
https://surface.syr.edu/lerner/159
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
