For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.
In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation’s women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study being published today.
The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women’s life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.
From the 1960s through the 1990s, average life expectancy nationwide increased from 73.5 years to 79.6 years for women.
In those least-healthy counties, life expectancy increased from 74.5 to 75.5 between 1983 and 1999, while in the healthiest places the life expectancy of women had reached 83.
The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It may also represent the leading edge of the obesity epidemic.
Life expectancy is not a direct measure of how long people live. Instead, it is a prediction of how long the average person would live if the death rates at the time of his or her birth lasted a lifetime.
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