Gap in Black-White Life Expectancy Narrows

It's a good sign, but not a victory, one expert says.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
Friday, March 16, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

FRIDAY, March 16 (HealthDay News) -- The life expectancy gap between U.S. blacks and whites has been shrinking over the past decade, mainly due to lower death rates among blacks for homicide, HIV, unintentional injuries and heart disease, researchers report.

Overall, the life expectancy divide between whites and blacks has closed from 7.1 years in 1993 to 5.3 years in 2003, government data shows. In 2003, the average U.S. black could expect to live 72.7 years, compared to 78 years for whites.

However, despite this progress, the gap remains significant, and more work is needed if the gap is to be further reduced, according to the report in the March 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"From 1983 to 1993, the life-expectancy gap between blacks and whites widened considerably. From 1993 to 2003, that gap has declined by 18 percent for women and 25 percent for men," said study co-author John Lynch, from the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University, in Montreal.

The main reasons for the decline are improving death rates for blacks, Lynch said. For black males, death rates shrank, "especially in terms of homicide, HIV and unintentional injuries," he said. "For black women, there have been improvements in cardiovascular disease. These causes of death make up 70 to 80 percent of the decline," he said.

In the study, Lynch and his colleagues used data from the U.S. National Vital Statistics System, maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics, to look at black and white life expectancy from 1983 to 2003.

They found that, for women, heart disease was the largest contributor to the improvement in life expectancy. Other conditions in 2003 that contributed to the gap narrowing for women included diabetes, stroke and infant mortality.

For men, the largest contributor to the gap in 1983 and 1993 was homicide. By 2003, heart disease had become the leading factor behind the divide, followed by homicide, HIV and infant mortality, the researchers found.