A major component of that for my grandparents is that they live four floors up without an elevator.
Interestingly, their next door neighbour is also still among us and the general pattern was that people in that block would start passing away starting from the lowest floors.
It's a small thing, but I can see how it works - living on the third floor I see that my joints are better lubricated than back when I was living on the ground floor, so taking long walks is also no issue.
Can you go into more details on what you are trying to point out here? I am not sure what stories you are referring to, nor do I fully understand the rest of your sentence.
People see some stupid anecdote and then share the theory that fits whatever they believe to be true no matter how nonsensical it is.
If I told you the people on the north side of my grandma’s nursing home died before the people who lived on the south side, you’d have some theory about sunlight exposure and excessive mold growth on the north side of the building. Air pollution kills!
But then it turns out the north side is just where they put the sicker people.
With respect to four floor walkup, by this logic, excepting other factors which might negate it, you would expect there to be a preponderance of exceptionally aged people in New York.
It appears that living in New York shortens your lifespan quite significantly (possibly due to air pollution). Income-adjusted, New Yorkers die a few years too young, and there is a higher incidence of cancer than other places.
That document doesn’t seem to compare things to national rates, but to my knowledge the NYC life expectancy is above NY state’s, which itself is significantly above the national average. The densest parts of Manhattan, which also have some of the most air pollution (but high incomes) have the highest life expectancies.
With a brief googling it looks like cancer incidence is in line with national averages, but mortality is lower. Significant racial and socioeconomic disparities impact both averages.
When you adjust for income, NYC does pretty poorly. Non-income-adjusted, one of the richest places on the planet is in line with its surroundings, yes.
Your source doesn't support that (no comparison with other places), and other sources don't seem to back it up. See the "Local Life Expectancies by Income" chart here: https://www.healthinequality.org/. It seems generally that high income people have comparable life expectancies across the country, whereas there is much higher variability among lower incomes.
The Principle of Charity would suggest that the grandparent comment was not trying to control for age differences, but was sharing an anecdote that many folks in the grandparent’s neighborhood were of similar age, leading to a hypothesis, and draw what conclusions you will.
I interpreted that to mean, walk more floors, get more exercise, live longer, which aligns with conventional scientific wisdom.
That's an interesting principle* and I totally get it, but I'm not 100% sure it applies here?
This is a comment section on an article about scientific data quality, and I'm pointing out a potentially confounding issue with the anecdata? Another valid challenge would be "wouldn't people with more health issues choose to live on lower floors, and logically be expected to pass away sooner?"
It's possible I've been reading too many Data Colada posts, but I saw the OP got back to me with a plausible explanation that enriched my worldview, so I'm going to take it that the OP didn't find offense in my response.
* One immediate problem I see with that principle is that it can quickly become circular. For example, an easy criticism of anybody attempting to reference it, as you did here, is to ask: did you apply the principle to my comment? And in turn, you could say the same of mine!
Funny you should say that, because it was indeed a whole district built from scratch by communists after the war to house people working in the local steelmill and indeed everyone there was initially roughly the same age.
Interestingly, their next door neighbour is also still among us and the general pattern was that people in that block would start passing away starting from the lowest floors.
It's a small thing, but I can see how it works - living on the third floor I see that my joints are better lubricated than back when I was living on the ground floor, so taking long walks is also no issue.