Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images file A medical worker performs a PCR test for Covid-19 in Boston on Dec. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, has started to reverse that, with white people now living on average five years longer than Black people. She was not involved in the new study.Īrias said Black Americans have historically had a lower life expectancy than non-Hispanic white Americans in the 1900s, white people's life expectancy was, on average, 14 years longer than that of Black people's.īy 2019, she said, the country saw progress, with the gap narrowing to four years. The findings mirror those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, said Elizabeth Arias, a health scientist for the center who analyzes national death data. Roth said the disparities between the states looked as if people were "living in different countries." For Black men, the average life expectancy in Rhode Island was about 81 years, and about 67 years in Washington, D.C. What's more, the researchers found widening disparities within the Black community, with life expectancy varying by state.īlack women in Rhode Island, for example, had a longer average life expectancy (about 87 years) than Black women in Washington, D.C., (about 76 years), according to the study. The disparities fluctuated among states - Missouri saw the largest increase in life expectancy disparities over the time period, while Massachusetts, Connecticut and Oregon saw the largest decreases, according to the study. They found that while life expectancy improved for each of the groups over the last three decades, Black Americans consistently had the lowest life expectancy of any of the groups. According to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, life expectancy at birth in the United States is 76.4 years. But it fell to 77 in 2020 and dropped further, to just over 76, in 2021.
census data to estimate life expectancy for white, Black and Hispanic Americans from 1990 through 2019. With rare exceptions, life expectancy has been on the rise in the US: it was 47 years in 1900, 68 years in 1950, and by 2019 it had risen to nearly 79 years.
In the study, Roth and his team looked at death records and U.S. Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group via Getty Images Midwife Angie Miller, right, listens to the heartbeat of the baby of MyLin Stokes Kennedy, center, who is with her wife, Lindsay, and their child, Lennox, 21 months, in California on June 29, 2021. Greg Roth, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. "The interaction of race, ethnicity and geography is really profound and explains a lot of the gaps in health that we see in the United States,” said lead study author Dr.
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