A joint study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington showed that nearly one in five American women saw a decline in their life expectancy beginning in the 1980s.
However, overall life expectancy in the U.S. increased more than seven years for men and more than six years for women between 1960 and 2000. The study tracked data from more than 2,000 county "units" between 1959 and 2001.
Majid Ezzati, associate professor of international health at HSPH and lead author of the study said in a press release, "There has always been a view in U.S. health policy that inequalities are more tolerable as long as everyone's health is improving."
The majority 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.
"There is now evidence that there are large parts of the population in the United States whose health has been getting worse for about two decades," Ezzati added.
The study found that while 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. However, for women the 1983 life expectancy gap of 6.7 years increased to 7.5 years by 1999.
Life expectancy in high-income countries around the country has gradually risen, with few exceptions, according to the study.
