Quality of life is about more than cost of living and proximity to parks. It’s about the ability to access opportunities to make decisions to improve your life.
A report issued earlier this year outlines which parishes in Louisiana have the best starting point for residents to have long, healthy lives with access to education and the ability to earn good wages.
Measure of America of the Social Science Research Council used information about health, earnings and access to education to calculate the American Human Development Index.
HDI runs from 0 to 10.
It’s meant to be a measure of how people are doing, not just the economy. It uses mortality and population data; median earning information; and both enrollment in K-12 and higher learning enrollment paired with the rate of people 25 and older who have degrees.
Louisiana scores a 4.35, and the United States generally scores a 5.37. Ascension Parish has the highest score in the state with 5.35, and East Carroll Parish has the lowest score with 1.49. (No score was computed for Webster Parish due to lack of data.)
Measure of America uses the report not only to analyze current information but also makes recommendations how to improve residents’ abilities to expand their opportunities.
Who has the best quality of life?
The state has made gains in the past decade. It scored 3.92 in the 2007 study. Life expectancy and educational progress has been made as well. However, there are still significant disparities when the data is processed by race, gender and place.
Men have a 4.47, and women have a 4.35.
By ethnicity, scores are:
- Asian: 6.29
- White: 5.15
- Latino: 4.62
- Black: 2.93
The report notes that most of the lowest-scoring parishes are in the northeast, and the highest are in the southeast. Bossier Parish in the northwest is an anomaly, but The 10 highest-scoring parishes are all near a city or its suburbs. Rural areas make up the bottom 10 parishes, and the report notes Black residents in some of the lowest-scoring places are struggling.
Health
The average live expectancy in Louisiana is 76 years, which is about 2.5 years less than the national average.
Ascension residents have the longest life expectancy with 76.9.
The parishes with the lowest live expectancies all have poverty rates higher than 20{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}: LaSalle, Caldwell, East Carroll, West Carroll and Catahoula.
Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in the state. Reducing smoking and reducing opioid use are key, as is increasing exercise and working to eliminate food deserts.
Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate is four times the national rate. According to the report, there’s need for increased access to high-quality prenatal care and postnatal care.
Black women in Louisiana are about four times more likely to die from complications than white women.
Infant mortality also outpaces the national rate.
Measure of America also determined a need to bolster the state’s mental health care system.
The state has the second-highest rate for firearm-related deaths in the U.S. — on average, 967 per year.
About 47{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22} were suicides, and 50{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22} were homicides.
White people in Louisiana were about four times more likely than black people to die by gun suicide.
Measure for America notes that limited access to firearms would delay access to the means to make an impulsive decision, as suicide often is. It compared the move to adding suicide barriers to bridges or putting pills in blister packs rather than bottles.
Education
Louisiana lags behind the rest of the nation regarding education enrollment for ages 3-24 and graduate degree rates for adults older than 25. (The study weighted having a degree by two-thirds and educational enrollment by one-third.)
Lincoln Parish has the highest score in the state with 5.91. East Carroll has 1.28.
Most top-performing parishes for education are home to a college or university.
Preschool enrollment outpaces the national rate by more than 3{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}. Black children are more likely to be enrolled in preschool than white children, which the report credits with publicly funded programs, like Head Start, in low-income communities.
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The report suggests changes to K-12 disparities including residential and economic segregation, which requires a reinvestment in public schools.
Improving children’s outcomes by working to increase early childhood education, like instituting universal Pre-K would get kids the interventions they need for developmental and later academic success while providing economic relief for families.
Other suggestions to improve educational outcomes include creating better transitions from school to the workforce, reforming juvenile justice and ensuring students have access to accurate sex education information and support for teen parents to stay in school.
Earnings
Louisiana workers 16 and older have a median income of $31,000, which is $4,000 less than the U.S. median.
On average, white workers earn about $12,000 more than Asian, Latino and Black workers. Black workers also earn less than white workers in every parish, and the gap ranges from $5,558 to $21,412.
Claiborne Parish has the lowest in the state with $19,470.
Only five parishes have child poverty levels below the 18{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22} U.S. average, and East Carroll Parish has the highest rate with 73{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}. Cameron Parish has the lowest with 12{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}.
Suggestions to improve median earnings include raising wages, addressing poverty, improving public transportation, creating more affordable housing, reducing incarcerations and getting more youths in jobs or enrolled in higher education.
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How we got here
“The racial and geographic patterns in health, education, and earnings outcomes we see today did not arise randomly. Rather, they were constructed over hundreds of years through complex systems of racism, economic exploitation, and segregation,” the reports states.
In an 1860 map, the parishes of Carroll (now East and West Carroll), Madison, Tensas and Concordia had the highest percentages of enslaved people. Now, they have some of the lowest HDI scores in the state.
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The report calls out the discrepancy between Caddo Heights and South Highlands in Shreveport. The city is split east-west by Interstate 49. The neighborhoods are adjacent.
South Highlands’ census track has a score of 8.55. Caddo Heights has 1.51.
The life expectancy in South Highlands is 12.5 longer than Caddo Heights. Median earnings are $60,980 in one and $16,835 in the other. More than 85{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22} of South Highlands residents are white but more than 90{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22} of Caddo Heights residents are Black.
The report delineates a history of racial zoning paired with preventing low-income and Black communities from accessing federal housing loans under the New Deal. Population shifts from the 1930s to the 1980s led to a racial split, and by the time I-49 was built, the west side of the city was mostly Black.
What are the big hurdles?
Both youth disconnection and incarceration were listed as hurdles to address.
According to the report, Louisiana has the nation’s fourth highest rate of people ages 16-24 who aren’t employed or a student. (It’s called the youth disconnection rate.)
The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to further bring down the rate nationwide.
East Carroll has the highest disconnection rate with 77.2{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}, and Lincoln Parish has the lowest with 9.2{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}.
Black men in Louisiana have the highest disconnection rate with 27.1{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}. The national rate for all races and genders is 11.2{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}. White men and women in Louisiana have 12.2{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}, the lowest rates. Latino men have 12.5{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}, Louisiana in general has 16.4{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}, Black women have 17.4{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}, and Latina women have 19{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22}.
Disconnected youths are more than 1.5 times more likely to live below the poverty line. More than 10{d9cf345e272ccae06ddf47bdd1d417e7fd8f81a9d196cc6ace4cb20fad8f4c22} live in an institution.
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Louisiana has the nation’s highest incarceration rate. Lower-scoring parishes have significantly higher incarceration rates than the highest-scoring parishes.
The report outlines multiple factors that contribute, including: harsh sentencing requirements, underfunded public defenders, the power of district attorneys , the financial effects of using prison inmates as labor and the number of jobs generated by staffing correctional centers.
Additionally, rural jails are holding increasing numbers of state and federal detainees or undocumented immigrants. In 2015, the East Carroll Parish jail admitted more than 20,600 people. Currently, U.S. census data estimates about 6,900 residents live in the parish.
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