Life Expectancy and Scandinavians

I tossed off the remark in class that Utah’s high life expectancy might be because of the predominance of Scandinavian genes.

Internationally, life expectancies in Scandinavia rank 3, 7, 13, 25, and 36 — and all are higher than the U.S. Check out the map (this is male life expectancy only):

For the U.S., here’s a map of Scandinavian heritage:

And, here’s a map of life expectancy:

I put together a spreadsheet to support this. Utahn’s live 1.6 years longer than the average in the U.S., and 2/3 of that is explained by a naive model of Scandinavian heritage.