Life expectancy decreases in selected areas in U.S.

A recent study has reported large disparities in the life expectancy of people coming from different geographical areas and races in U.S. Most importantly, death rates for women have jumped up in many poor counties in the past four decades.

This is the first study to look at mortality trends in the U.S. counties and that too over such a long period of time.

The researchers collected the mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau between 1959 and 2001. The National Center for Health Statistics stopped providing any data after 2001.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington found that throughout the 1960s and '70s, there was a steady increase in life expectancy among both men and women.

However, in the early 1980s, it started to decline in some of the "worst-off" counties in U.S. The researchers also observed that the disparity is not spreading to many parts of the country; rather, the life expectancy of only a significant segment of the population is declining or at best stagnating.

"Disparities are going up not because people are getting better and some are getting better faster," said Majid Ezzati, an associate professor of international health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and the lead author of the study.

"The worst off are simply not getting better, and some are getting worse, and this is especially the case for women. One out of five females' health has not gotten better and, for a subset of those, mortality has gotten worse."

In essence, it is something similar to rich becoming richer and poor getting poorer.

This is for the first time since 1918 flu pandemic that the life expectancies are falling in certain parts of the United States, said Dr. Chris Murray, co-author of the study and director of the UW's new Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the Department of Global Health. "It's remarkable in the history of the U.S."

Researchers have also noted that the increased death rates among women from lung cancer and emphysema. The most probable reason behind this is thought be the increased number of American women who have started smoking.

"This is a story about smoking, blood pressure and obesity," said Ezzati.

Taking a careful notice of these findings, public health officials and health care activists need to come forward and spread a word of caution to their fellow Americans to improve their lifestyle.