A baby born today in Anson County will live an average of 6.4 years less than a baby born on the same day in Orange County, according to N.C. Child.
The life expectancy for an Anson baby born today is 75.3 years, while the life expectancy for an Orange County baby is 81.7 years, the highest in North Carolina.
While lower than some counties, Anson’s life expectancy is not the lowest. Swain County has the lowest life expectancy with only 73.1 years.
The data shows that one in seven Anson babies are born with a low birth weight, which NCChild.org calls “the strongest predictor of infant mortality.”
About 35 percent of Anson children live in poverty, putting them at a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and developmental delays, according to the N.C. Child’s 2014 Child Health Snapshot. About 1,560 children (or 27.2 percent) live in “food insecure households.”
The county-by-county snapshots were put together by Laila A. Bell, director of research and data at N.C. Child. She designed them to accompany the North Carolina Child Health Report Card, which is released each year with the North Carolina Institute of Medicine.
Dr. Fred Thompson, director of the Anson County Health Department, compared Anson’s statistics to those of Union County. “If you look at the county health rankings, we have 38 percent of our children living in poverty compared to 14 percent in Union,” he said. “And 25 percent of North Carolina children live in single-parent households, compared to 56 percent in Anson, compared to 20 percent in Union County.”
Although the two counties are side-by-side, Thompson said Union has some significant differences. “I think, at the end of the day, that without any economic growth and development, it’s going to be really, really difficult to improve these health outcomes and other statistics,” he said. “Anson County is ranked number 84 on the health outcomes, Union County is ranked number four and we’re right next to each other. To me, the explanation is that in Union the median income is $64,000 and in Anson it’s $33,400.”
While he believes that it is necessary to improve the health of Anson, Thompson acknowledged that there are some downsides of economic growth and development. “I know there’s things that come with that that people don’t like: congestion, traffic and that sort of stuff.”
Reducing the teen pregnancy rate is another factor. “Young women aged 15-19 that have babies sort of repeat that cycle,” Thompson said. “Most of them are being raised in poverty, in a single-parent household, and there’s a tendency of those parents to not graduate high school.”
In Anson, about 56 percent of children are raised in a single-parent household, compared to 22 percent in Union County. “I think if we could reduce that and have more children growing in a ‘traditional’ two-parent household, it would reduce the number of children living in a one-income family,” Thompson said.
Several local organizations are helping local children and families. Thompson listed several, including the Anson Crisis Ministry, Feed My Lambs, local churches, the Anson County Partnership for Children, Circles of Hope, the health department, the Department of Social Services, the schools and Carolinas HealthCare System.
Thompson has lived in Anson for 20 years, and said that the life expectancy, teen pregnancy rate, poverty and other issues are nothing new. “I’ve been talking about them since the first year I was here,” he said. “Anson is a Tier 1 county, one of the 10 poorest counties in North Carolina, and I think as long as we are, the health outcomes are not going to look so good.”
To view the 2014 Child Health Report Cards by county, visit NCChild.org.