Any chance this is due to illegal immigration moving inward? The blue border areas have already been impacted and stabilized. The red areas represent the new frontier of immigration, which will experience an increased percentage of poorer women, even second generation immigrant women. Just a thought. Don’t know if the stats reflect immigration impact or not.
Female Hispanic immigrants are actually surprisingly long-lived.
Think about it. Mexico has made significant improvements in overall material well-being. So illegal immigrants nowadays arrive in much better health than they did 50 years ago. And they also have access to taxpayer-paid health-care.
This kind of map can hide a lot of details.