US life expectancy hit record high in '06, study says
Gender, ethnic disparities are narrowing
WASHINGTON - Americans' life expectancy reached a record high of 78.1 years in 2006, with disparities among ethnic groups and between the sexes generally narrowing, according to government data released yesterday.
The death rates from most diseases went down, with influenza mortality falling steeply and AIDS mortality marking its 10th straight year of decline.
Infant mortality in 2006 also fell from the previous year, continuing a trend stretching back nearly 50 years.
"This report has a lot of good news," said Melonie Heron, a demographer at the National Center for Health Statistics who compiled and analyzed the data drawn from death certificates filed with each state and the District.
The favorable trends appear to contradict reports of shortening life spans in some Americans, specifically women living in rural parts of the South and Midwest. The new report, however, did not examine mortality at that level of detail. The two trends, overall national improvement, with certain subgroups doing worse, are not incompatible, specialist noted.
The 2006 data also provide more evidence for what demographers term the "Hispanic Paradox" - as a group they have much lower mortality rates than expected for a population of relatively less education and wealth.
The overall US life expectancy of 78.1 years was up 0.3 years from 2005. Life expectancy for women was 80.7 years, and for men, 75.4 years. The disparity between the sexes, 5.3 years, has been declining since it peaked at about eight years in 1979.
White women had the longest life expectancy, at 81 years, followed by black women (76.9 years), white men (76 years), and black men (70 years). The gap between men and women is markedly greater in blacks (6.9 years) than whites (5 years).
Life expectancy is the calculation of how long a newborn could expect to live if the mortality rates at birth prevailed for a lifetime. Life expectancy can fluctuate from one year to the next if a large event, such as an influenza epidemic, affects the entire population, but long-term trends tend to reflect changes in the risk of death from many diseases.
From 2005 to 2006, death rates from heart disease, cancer, stroke, emphysema, hypertension, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, bloodstream infections, accidents, and suicide all declined. The biggest drop was in influenza and pneumonia - almost 13 percent, probably the result of a milder flu season and greater use of flu vaccine.
Heart disease and cancer, the two top killers, together accounted for 1.2 million of the 2.4 million deaths in America in 2006.
On the list of leading causes, Alzheimer's disease rose a notch, to No. 6, and diabetes dropped a notch to No. 7.
Infant mortality in 2006 dropped slightly to 6.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. For blacks, it was 13.3, more than double that of whites. (By comparison, Angola had an infant mortality rate of 154 in 2006, one of the highest in the world - and unchanged since 1990).
The overall mortality rate for Hispanics in 2006 was 550 deaths per 100,000 people. For non- Hispanic whites, it was 778. For non-Hispanic blacks, it was 1,001. This is unexpected because average income and education among Hispanics (except for Cuban-Americans) is below that of whites. Those two variables strongly predict health and mortality.
Researchers have offered various theories to explain the "Hispanic Paradox," first recognized in the late 1970s.
One is that it does not actually exist but is only the consequence of bad data and confusion over who is classified as Hispanic. This explanation has been largely discounted, said Elizabeth Arias, a demographer at the National Center for Health Statistics and a specialist on the topic.
Other theories are that Hispanic immigrants tend to return home to die; that immigrants are inherently healthier than people in the countries to which they move; or that something in the habits or lifestyle of Hispanics in America is conducive to good health.
