Many counties where life expectancy dropped the most are in Kentucky. Some of the biggest gains in life expectancy during the study were seen in counties in central Colorado, Alaska and in metropolitan areas around San Francisco and New York.īut there was little, if any, improvement in life expectancy in some southern counties in states stretching from Oklahoma to West Virginia. In contrast, counties in central Colorado had the highest life expectancy. Counties along the lower half of the Mississippi and in eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia also had very low life expectancy compared with the rest of the country. Several counties in South and North Dakota, typically with Native American reservations, had the lowest life expectancy, the study found. To examine changes in life expectancy over time, researchers looked at death certificates from each county in the country. “Socioeconomic factors - a combination of poverty, income, education, unemployment and race - were independently related to 60 percent of the inequality, and access to and quality of health care explained 27 percent.” “We found that risk factors - obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, hypertension, and diabetes - explained 74 percent of the variation in longevity in the U.S.,” Murray said by email. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. “For both of these geographies, the drastically different life expectancies are likely the result of a combination of risk factors, socioeconomics and access and quality of health care in those areas,” said senior study author Dr. For men, life expectancy climbed from 70 years to 76.7 years, while for women it increased from 77.5 years to 81.5 years.īut the study also highlighted stark disparities: a baby born in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, can expect to live just 66.8 years, while a child born in Summit County, Colorado, can expect to live 86.8 years, on average. Nationwide in 2014, the average life expectancy was about 79.1 years, up 5.3 years from 1980, the study found. (Reuters Health) - Even as life expectancy is rising in many places across the U.S., there are some places where lifespans are getting shorter and geographical inequalities are becoming more pronounced, a new study suggests.
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