According to the Department of Health and Human Services, in the early 1980s, wealthy Americans lived 2.8 years longer than poor people. The rich and poor were defined as the richest and poorest 10% across a number of different economic measures. In the late 1990s the rich lived 4.5 years longer, and the gap has only widened since (Hargreaves, 2013). A study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute examined a number of risk factors that help explain the health (or disease) of counties across the United States. In addition to the suspects you might expect – a high rate of smoking, lots of violent crime – the researchers found that people who live in unequal communities are more likely to die before age 75 than people who live in more equal communities, even though average incomes were the same (Sanger-Katz, 2015). The effect of inequality was statistically significant. The differences were small, but for every increase in inequality in a community, the percentage of residents dying before age 75 increased (Sanger-Katz,