| This is not an April Fools story
West Virginia has the highest death rate of any state.
The state has few outsiders from foreign countries. It has the lowest percentage of residents born in other countries, only one-percent. The national average is 11%.
The Statistical Abstract of the United States, an annual publication by the US Census Bureau, has some interesting stats.
Funeral directors are in the right business in the Mountain State. In 2001, 1,200 West Virginians of every 100,000-thousand died. The national average is 849.
If you're a health care provider, you should be quite busy. West Virginia ranked first among the states in death rates from heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases and diabetes.
West Virginians stay put and tend to move less frequently than people anywhere else, except for Pennsylvania.
Lots of residents are gimping and can't get around. The state has the third highest percentage of people between 21 and 64 who are disabled, behind only Mississippi and Kentucky.
Our women like to puff, puff, puff those cigarettes - the highest rate of women smokers in the USA.
And state residents don't go to college all that much, dead last with college graduates.
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