Where Do Residents Live Longest in the Lower Hudson Valley?

By Heather Martino and Kevin Zawacki

Forget property values, local taxes, and test scores—how about comparing Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties by life expectancy?

Patch has parsed data culled from a University of Washington study that analyzes how long men and women are living in counties across the nation.

According to the data—and displayed on the above map—men in Westchester live longest, with an average life expectancy of 79.8 years. The silver medal goes to males in Rockland County, with a 79.6 year life expectancy). In Putnam, the average male life expectancy is 78.7 years.

The good news: all three counties have a higher male life expectancy than the state average (77.6) and national average (76.1).

Women in all three counties live longer than men, and the Westchester-first, Putnam-last trend also applies. Westchester women live, on average, to 84.1-years-old. In Rockland it's 83.4, and in Putnam it's 82.4.

Again, the Lower Hudson Valley female numbers trump the state average of 82.2, and the national average of 80.8. 

Throughout the US, major improvements in life expectancy occurred in areas with large metropolises, like parts of California, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Iowa, New York and Virginia. But the disparity is widening, with counties in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama seeing declines or stagnations in residents’ average age of death.

“As a nation, what we can do about that is have a concerted effort to tackle the key preventable causes in those communities where there is no improvement,” said IHME Director Christopher Murray. He told Patch that in places where there is stagnation, local communities should “focus on changing things there that we know can make a difference, like diet, tobacco, high blood pressure and physical inactivity.”