Life Expectancy Is Declining In Some Pockets Of The Country

[PyrateJohn]

Life Expectancy Is Declining in Some Pockets of the Country


By NICHOLAS BAKALAR [New York Times]


Life expectancy has long been growing steadily for most Americans.
But
it has not for a significant minority, according to a new study,
which
finds a growing disparity in mortality depending on race, income and
geography.


The study, published Monday in the online journal PLoS, analyzed life
expectancy in all 3,141 counties in the United States from 1961 to
1999, the latest year for which complete data have been released by
the National Center for Health Statistics. Although life span has
generally increased since 1961, the authors reported, it began to
level off or even decline in the 1980s for 4 percent of men and 19
percent of women.


“It’s very troubling that there are parts of the wealthiest country
in
the world, with the highest health spending in the world, where
health
is getting worse,” said Majid Ezzati, the lead author and an
associate
professor of international health at Harvard. It is a phenomenon, he
added, “unheard of in any other developed country.”


Counties with significant declines were concentrated in Appalachia,
the Southeast, Texas, the southern Midwest and along the Mississippi
River. Life expectancy increases were mainly in the Northeast and on
the Pacific Coast.


The researchers also compared the 2.5 percent of counties with the
lowest life expectancies and the 2.5 percent with the highest. The
disparity between those two groups rose to 11 years for men in 1999,
from 9 years in 1983, and to 7.5 years from 6.7 in women.


The study found that from 1961 to 1983, there was little difference
in
average income for the counties where life expectancy rose at rates
above and below the mean. But after 1983, life span rose with wealth.
Race may also be a factor. In counties where life expectancy
declined,
the proportion of African-Americans was higher.