an In The Media Appearance
"Great Migration Shortened Lives of Blacks Who Fled Jim Crow South" - NBC News. 02/17/2015
A recent study of the Great Migration in early to mid 20th-century American found that mortality rates increased 40 percent for black men and 50 percent for black women who fled the dangers and discrimination of the Jim Crow South in search of better lives. Coauthor Seth Sanders says these findings contradict a common assumption that greater socioeconomic opportunities always benefit health: “We thought what we would find was that migration north extended life and made the African-American population healthier. We actually found exactly the opposite. Urban life is stressful. Being away from your roots is probably stressful.”