Chicago’s homicide rate has drawn headlines this year, locally and nationally, and not without reason. Through July, 308 people had been slain here, 27 percent more than in the first seven months of 2011.
Using the same two sets of communities, we extended our analysis beyond homicide—the eighth-leading cause of death in Chicago—to other, more common causes of death.
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Our comparison shows that poor African-American neighborhoods should come with a surgeon general’s warning. When it comes to the leading causes of death in Chicago (cancer, heart disease, diabetes-related illnesses, stroke, and unintentional injury), the mortality rate in the five poorest neighborhoods—Riverdale, Fuller Park, Englewood, West Garfield Park, and East Garfield Park—was far higher than in the five least-poor neighborhoods— Mount Greenwood, Edison Park, Norwood Park, Beverly, and Clearing. For diabetes-related deaths, it was almost double; for unintentional injury, it was more than double. The infant mortality rate—the rate of death in the first year of life—was two and a half times as high. And the death rate from all causes was 60 percent higher than in the wealthier counterparts, and 43 percent higher than the citywide rate.
But there’s another way to look at the toll of a high homicide rate on a community. The vast majority of homicide victims are ages 15 to 34, while heart disease and stroke fatalities tend to be much older. Homicide, in other words, robs more years of life than the standard mortality rates indicate.
The correlation between race and YPLL is pronounced. Here are the ten community areas with the worst YPLL rates, and their percentages of African-American residents:
The stress of living amid violence and unrelenting poverty may also make residents more susceptible to disease. Inferior diets, smoking, alcoholism, and drug addiction all are more common in poor neighborhoods and are linked with higher rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Unintentional injury, another leading killer in Chicago and nationally, is also associated with drug abuse: in Chicago, the number one underlying cause of death in this category was accidental drug overdose. (Three times as many people died of accidental overdoses in the five poorest neighborhoods as in their counterparts.)
