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We’re (Not) All Living Longer

While we often hear that Americans are living longer, a new report says that depending on where you live, life expectancy can vary more than 20 years — and that gap has widened significantly in recent decades.

According to a blog post from the National Institutes of Health, researchers attribute this gap to a variety of social and economic influences, as well as differences in modifiable behavioral and lifestyle factors such as obesity, inactivity and tobacco use.

In the new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, a research team partially funded by NIH found that the average American baby born in 2014 can expect to live to about age 79. That’s up from a national average of about 73 in 1980 and around 68 in 1950. However, babies born in 2014 in remote Oglala Lakota County, S.D., home to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, can expect to live only about 66 years. That’s in stark contrast to a child born about 400 miles away in Summit County, Colo., where life expectancy at birth now exceeds age 86.

In the new study, a team led by Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, wanted to get a closer look at those disparities, and in order to fill in as much geographical detail as possible, they mapped life expectancies county by county — the smallest unit for which death records are routinely available — from 1980 to 2014.

They found that 13 counties across the United States actually have lower life expectancies now than they did in 1980. Life expectancy in Owsley County, Ken., for example, slipped from age 72 to age 70.

As it turns out, residents of central Colorado are living the longest. In addition, certain counties in Alaska, New York, Florida and Virginia have also made what were termed “impressive” gains in life expectancy in recent decades, as has the District of Columbia.

The report notes that the risk of dying before age 5 has dropped across the country, but that more than 1 in 10 U.S. counties saw an increased risk of death for adults aged 25 to 45 during the study’s time frame. Additionally, it cited “wide and growing differences” among counties in the risk of death for Americans over age 45.

The researchers claim that while the differences in life span across the country can be explained in part by socioeconomic factors, nearly three-fourths of the variation in longevity is accountable to behavioral and metabolic risk factors, including obesity, exercise, smoking, alcohol and drug addiction, blood pressure and diabetes.

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