For example, an Asian-American woman will likely live almost 20 years longer than an African-American male who lives in an urban area.
According to a national study in today's PLoS Medicine online, Hawaii (80 years) is the best place to live the longest, while Washington D.C. ranked the worst (72 years).
Lead investigator Christopher Murray tells Bloomberg, the differences are driven by injury and preventable risk factors for long-term disease such as smoking, alcoholism and obesity, especially in Americans ages 15 to 59. He said most health-policy initiatives currently focus on children and the elderly.
"The evidence is really quite clear that most of the gap across these groups is due to differences in mortality in young and middle-aged adult men and women and most of that is due to chronic disease."
Murray, Harvard Initiative for Global Health director, adds, "It's not HIV. It's not homicide. It's cardiovascular disease. It's chronic respiratory disease, liver disease and somewhat cancers."
The researchers found, however, that gaps in life expectancy have changed little from 1982 to 2001. The data came from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics. The study was financed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Association of Schools for Public Health and the National Institute on Aging.
