Lifespan gap between blacks, whites in US narrows
WASHINGTON -- White Americans continue to live longer than blacks, but the gap is shrinking because of declines in black death rates from AIDS, homicide, and injuries, as well as lower heart disease among black women, researchers said yesterday.
Tracking the period from 1983 to 2003, they found that the gap in life expectancy widened in the 1980s as AIDS and murders took a higher toll on younger blacks. It then contracted in the 1990s as those factors eased.
The gap closed to a historic low of 5.3 years in 2003 from 7.1 years in 1993, according to the study, which is based on an analysis of US government mortality data. Higher black mortality from heart disease was the biggest contributor to the gap.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers led by Sam Harper of McGill University in Montreal said the life expectancy for US blacks in 2003 was 72.7 years, compared with 78 years for whites -- all-time highs for both.
The gap was wider among men (age 69 for blacks, 75.3 for whites) than women ( age 76.1 for blacks, 80.5 for whites). In fact, black women had a longer life expectancy than white men.
"We've made some important progress in reducing the black-white gap," Harper said in an interview.
"The other message that we want to emphasize is that there still remains a pretty substantial gap. And in terms of making additional progress, what we really should be focusing on is cardiovascular disease," Harper said.
US whites have lived longer than blacks for as long as such statistics have keep kept, dating to the mid-19th century. The trend has been toward longer life for both groups, but the size of the racial gap has fluctuated periodically because of various factors.
From 1993 to 2003, the life-expectancy gap between white and black women declined by a year -- half of which was because of lower mortality rates among blacks in heart disease, homicide, and unintentional injuries.
The gap among men during the same period was cut even more, by two years, amid lower death rates from homicide, AIDS, and unintentional injuries.
