Life Expectancy Drops For The Poor

Life expectancy for people who live in the richer parts of the United States will live longer than those in poorer parts.

According to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington, people who live in the richer parts of the United States have a longer life expectancy than those in the poorer parts.

The researchers found most of the counties that had the worst downward swings in life expectancy were in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, and in Appalachia, extending into the southern portion of the Midwest and into Texas largely as a result of diabetes, cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

From 1961 to 1999, average life expectancy in the U.S. increased from 66.9 to 74.1 years for men and from 73.5 to 79.6 for women, however, the study found that at beginning in the 1980s, the best-off counties continued to improve but there was a stagnation or worsening of life expectancy in the worst-off counties.

Men in the best-off counties lived nine years longer than those in the worst-off counties in 1983, by 1999 that gap had increased to 11 years. For women, the 1983 life expectancy gap of 6.7 years increased to 7.5 years by 1999.

The study, published in the journal PLoS Medicine, found 4 percent of the male population and 19 percent of the female population experienced either decline or stagnation in mortality beginning in the 1980s.