Citation
Lee, Hedwig E. & Harris, Kathleen M. (2022). Mapping the Color Line: Racial/Ethnic and Gender Disparities in Life Expectancy across the United States. Annals of Internal Medicine, 175(8), 1185-1186.Abstract
In 1903, sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote,“...for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line”(1). In their article, Johnson and colleagues estimate life expectancy at birth in the United States byrace/ethnicity (non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic White,and Hispanic), sex, and state from 1990 to 2019. The findings add to our growing knowledge of large and persistent racial/ethnic health disparities and changes in disparities during recent stagnation in U.S. life expectancy. The focus on state-level differences provides an important window into our understanding of howhealth and well-being can vary drastically within our country. The researchers found a decline in within-state life expectancy disparities by race/ethnicity between 1990 and 2019, but an increase in across-state disparities. For example, non-Hispanic Black women and men in the District of Columbia fared worse than non-Hispanic Black women and men in Rhode Island, and this difference was considerably greater in 2019 than in 1990. These across-state gaps within race/ethnicity are large. In 2019, life expectancy for non-Hispanic Black men ranged from 66.9 years in the District of Columbia to 81.1 years in Rhode Island—an almost 15-year difference—and life expectancy for U.S. men overall was 76.3 years. Although non-Hispanic Black men in Rhode Island are doing better than average, non-Hispanic Black men in the District of Columbia had a life expectancy similar to that of all men 50 years ago, when life expectancy for men in1969 was 66.8 years (4). This suggests that a person's life expectancy in the United States may depend more on where you live than it has in the past.URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.7326/m22-1777Reference Type
Journal ArticleYear Published
2022Journal Title
Annals of Internal MedicineAuthor(s)
Lee, Hedwig E.Harris, Kathleen M.