On Mar 23, 4:32 pm, LEROY KNEVIL <le...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/22/large-and-growing-life-_n_92...
> New government research has found "large and growing" disparities in
life
> expectancy for richer
> and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the
> last two decades.
>
> Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers
> said, but affluent
> people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a
> widening gap.
>
> One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department
of
> Health and Human
> Services, said "the growing inequalities in life expectancy" mirrored
trends
> in infant mortality
> and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.
>
> The gaps have been increasing despite efforts by the federal government
to
> reduce them. One of
> the top goals of "Healthy People 2010," an official statement of
national
> health objectives
> issued in 2000, is to "eliminate health disparities among different
segments
> of the population,"
> including higher- and lower-income groups and people of different racial
and
> ethnic background.
>
> Dr. Singh said last week that federal officials had found "widening
> socioeconomic inequalities in
> life expectancy" at birth and at every age level.
>
> He and another researcher, Mohammad Siahpush, a professor at the
University
> of Nebraska Medical
> Center in Omaha, developed an index to measure social and economic
> conditions in every county,
> using census data on education, income, poverty, housing and other
factors.
> Counties were then
> classified into 10 groups of equal population size.
>
> In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could
expect
> to live 2.8 years
> longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By
> 1998-2000, the
> difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus
74.7
> years), and it
> continues to grow, he said.
>
> After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the
> most affluent, Dr. Singh
> said, noting that "life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in
1980
> than for the most
> deprived group in 2000."
"I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better."
|
