Well of course! The feminists have convinced women to become like men. So, just as men die younger, women are dying younger too!
“So, just as men die younger, women are dying younger too!”
My thoughts exactly. Also, when the difference in lifespan for married versus single men is brought up (in which married men live longer), that has to come into play here as well - more women aren’t getting married.
The rural south has been hit hard by trade policy and job loss. If women are statistically living shorter lives now compared to their mothers who likely worked, then working is not the cause. Not working is more likely to be causative.
Rural working class are inexorably sliding into poverty and dependence as a direct result of trade policy. With poverty and dependence comes hopelessness and substance abuse.
I see it all the time, former textile or furniture mill towns half deserted, what people remaining clearly on government assistance, otherwise they wouldn't be unoccupied during the course of the day. With poverty and government assistance comes Medicaid.
Hillary Clinton no doubt believed herself to be making a case for further government intervention and assistance via Obamacare with this “startling” statistic, but if anything it actually refutes her argument. For those who live in the rural south or on the urban fringe of it and see just what has been happening for twenty years or more, we're not exactly “startled.”
It was an inevitability.
Then, you have rural southern counties showing some improvement. What might be behind that, given the above? I can only speak for NC but I'd suggest looking at the racial makeup of those counties. In NC they're counties with a high percentage of black population, some actually majority black. Government efforts to improve mortality rates for black people have had some success. Of course, dependency and despondency has long been a problem in these communities, so stabilization or marginal improvement is not as difficult to achieve. Such individuals have little resistance to government programs and control, either.
So, what you're looking at is the toll of job loss upon rural working class white females. If they're dying off early it's the government that ultimately caused it, but Hillary Clinton proposes to ride in on a white horse (poor thing) and save them all... with more government.
Classic statist strategy, cause a problem, exacerbate it, then propose the "solution" that leads to more statist intervention. Then wash, rinse and repeat.