This statistic shows the average life expectancy in North America for those born in , by gender and region. In Canada, the average life expectancy was 80 years for males and 84 years for females in mid Life expectancy in North America Of those considered in this statistic, the life expectancy of female Canadian infants born in was the longest, at 84 years.
Female infants born in America that year had a similarly high life expectancy of 81 years. Male infants, meanwhile, had lower life expectancies of 80 years Canada and 76 years USA. Compare this to the worldwide life expectancy for babies born in 75 years for women and 70 years for men. Of continents worldwide, North America ranks equal first in terms of life expectancy of 77 years for men and 81 years for women. Life expectancy is lowest in Africa at just 62 years and 65 years for males and females respectively.
Hong Kong SAR is the country with the highest life expectancy worldwide for babies born in Life expectancy is calculated according to current mortality rates of the population in question. Global variations in life expectancy are caused by differences in medical care, public health and diet, and reflect global inequalities in economic circumstances. Likewise, Africa has by far the highest rate of mortality by communicable disease i.
AIDS, neglected tropics diseases, malaria and tuberculosis. Loading statistic Show source. Download for free You need to log in to download this statistic Register for free Already a member? Log in. Show detailed source information? Register for free Already a member? More information. Supplementary notes. Other statistics on the topic. Mortensen a Danish immigrant to the U. Life spans are not considered further in this report. This report documents the improvements in life expectancy that have occurred, analyzing both the underlying factors that contributed to mortality reductions as well as the continuing longevity differentials by sex and race.
While this report focuses on describing the demographic context of longevity change in the United States, these trends have implications for a wide range of social and economic issues that are likely to be considered by Congress. For instance, one consequence of lengthening life expectancies is that the older population's needs for care—assistance with daily tasks to allow continued community-living for high-functioning seniors, institutions for those with more severe disabilities or cognitive impairments, training of a specialized work force in geriatric care—are likely to increase, particularly for the oldest-old.
There are also questions with respect to ensuring basic income support, medical care, and housing for the older population. At the same time, there is the recognition that government programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, will face financial pressures to meet the increasing needs.
What program changes are required to ensure the continued viability of such programs as the number of beneficiaries increases? What will be the federal government's role in an environment of competing demands for limited resources?
As seen in Table 1 and Appendix B Table B -1 , life expectancy at birth increased dramatically over the past century in the United States—from Notes: Later year estimates are more reliable than those of the early 20 th century.
States were only admitted as qualification standards were met. Statistics prior to are based on data from the DRA states which increased in number over time. Alaska and Hawaii are first included in figures. Also note that data for years are not reported in this data source. Gains in longevity were fastest in the first half of the 20 th century.
These advances were largely attributed to "an enormous scientific breakthrough—the germ theory of disease" which led to the eradication and control of numerous infectious and parasitic diseases, especially among infants and children.
Interventions included boiling bottles and milk, washing hands, protecting food from flies, isolating sick children, ventilating rooms, and improving water supply and sewage disposal. Since mid-century, advances in life expectancy have largely been attributable to improvements in the prevention and control of the chronic diseases of adulthood.
In particular, death rates from two of the three major causes of death in —diseases of the heart i. The CDC 13 attributes the declines in diseases of the heart and cerebrovascular diseases to a combination of. Beyond medical interventions, public health measures, and individual behaviors, a number of additional factors are known to be associated with mortality decline.
They are briefly mentioned here, but it is beyond the scope of this report to discuss them in detail or to disentangle them from the factors already described:. Life expectancy in the United States, for both men and women, is significantly higher than the global average but is only slightly higher than the average for more developed countries 15 see Table 3.
Estimates are provided for a non-comprehensive list of selected counties in Table 3. The United States was ranked 48 th among countries and territories for both sexes. Source: CRS compilation based on data from the U.
The long-range projections needed for this assessment depend critically on assumptions for the future course of longevity. According to Steven Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration SSA , their future mortality assumptions are based on the recorded average annual mortality decline for the total U. This rate of improvement is more optimistic—about twice as large—as experienced during the last 18 years of the 20 th century.
Goss further suggested that "matching the accomplishments of the past century will not be easy. AIDS, SARS, 17 and antibiotic resistant microbes, along with increasing obesity 18 and declining levels of exercise, remind us that mortality improvements will not be automatic.
Gains from replacement organs and genetic engineering will be expensive, and may be difficult to provide for the population as a whole. A benefit of the statistical methods that have emerged to extrapolate historical mortality trends to the future is that they have worked well and are relatively simple and efficient.
Canada's approach assumes that economic productivity is the overall driving factor for sustained longevity improvements, and projects a relationship between future mortality decline and future real growth in employment earnings. An assumption is also made that there will be a gradual slowing of rates of improvement after the first 10 years. Notes : Interpretation of life expectancy at age 65, the average number of additional years that a person will live, assuming that he or she has already attained age For example, a year-old woman in the year will live, on average, an additional Table refers to SSA's intermediate-range period life expectancies.
Future mortality and survival are, however, difficult to predict and specialists disagree on not only the level but also the direction of future trends. Vaupel further suggests that it is unrealistic for SSA to assume that the United States will be unable to match the level of life expectancy in half-a-century that is already attained in other countries today. A number of articles suggested that current models may be too pessimistic in their assumptions about mortality and survival probabilities i.
Also, useful analyses of the contributions of smoking behavior to mortality trends 28 in the United States suggests that slow female gains in life expectancy over the past few decades may be temporary, and that the pace may pick up fairly soon. Technological advances also have the potential to expand life. The National Institute on Aging supports extensive analyses of genetic contributions to longevity in diverse species, as well as on the diseases and conditions that are responsible for premature death.
Life expectancy worldwide is generally higher for females than for their male counterparts. The average girl born at the turn of the 20 th century in the United States could expect to live From to , the difference in life expectancy increased from 2. In the mid- to late s, the average gap in life expectancy approximated the average gap seen in developed countries today—roughly seven years.
Since , the "female advantage" in life expectancy between the sexes in the United States has narrowed from 7.
A now dated, but still informative, study evaluated the contributions of various causes of death to the size of sex differentials in life expectancy in developed countries for the early s. In general, why is life expectancy longer for women? The answer, which is still being investigated, involves the complicated interplay of a host of biological, social, and behavioral conditions.
In addition, it differs according to age and to the underlying disease and mortality profiles for men and women.
At birth, boys have a clear advantage. In the United States, One researcher has suggested that the male advantage at birth is moderated by higher male mortality to "ensure that the number of men and women will be about the same at reproductive age. It has long been argued that hormones play a role in longevity. As described by Desjardins, 40 the female hormone estrogen helps to eliminate "bad" cholesterol LDL and thus may offer some protection against heart disease.
If a gene mutation occurs on one X, a woman's second X chromosome may be able to compensate. In comparison, genes on men's sole X chromosome may be expressed, even if they are deleterious without compensation.
Stindl, 43 however, argues that these classic biological explanations do not withstand critical analysis. A larger body requires more cell doublings, especially due to the ongoing regeneration of tissues over a lifetime.
Accordingly, the replicative history of male cells might be longer than that of female cells, resulting in the exhaustion of the regeneration potential and the early onset of age-associated diseases predominantly in males. The underlying mechanism is the gradual erosion of chromosome ends telomeres. Two recent studies confirm that men do have shorter telomeres than women at the same ages.
Numerous studies also demonstrate links between chronic stress and indices of poor health, including risk factors for cardiovascular disease and poorer immune function. Many researchers believe that behavioral and social factors also contribute significantly to the sex differentials observed between men and women.
Women's social status and life conditions such as the hardships associated with childbirth may have nullified American women's biological advantage at the beginning of the 20 th century but are no longer major factors in gender differentials in life expectancy in the United States, though these explanations are still relevant in a number of other countries. Higher male mortality rates have been attributed to greater male exposure to specific risk factors, such as alcohol consumption and occupational hazards.
Life expectancy in Russia, for instance, fell by 6. In investigating the cause of the sudden drop, a team of researchers from the London School of Economics and the Russian Academy of Sciences observed that excessive alcohol consumption contributed both directly and indirectly to the marked increases in deaths from fatal events e. The most cited behavioral contributor to higher male mortality rates in the United States—and the subject of considerable research interest—has been the greater male exposure to cigarette smoking.
Smoking patterns are an obvious place to look for an explanation of sex mortality differences because the health risks are high and long-lasting; large fractions of the population have engaged in the habit; and smoking patterns differ between the sexes. Pampel, 51 for instance, documented that the rate of decline in female mortality in the United States has slowed since or so, while that of males has returned to its earlier trend of relatively rapid improvement—thus resulting in a narrowing life expectancy differential by gender.
He concludes that smoking behavior lies behind the changing pace of mortality decline not only in the United States, but also in 20 other industrial nations. Extending Pampel's analysis, Lee showed that the rate of decline for deaths not associated with smoking was actually faster for women than men while death rates associated with smoking actually increased for women while decreasing for men. Allowance for the smoking histories of cohorts significantly affects the assessment of mortality trends: national mortality levels would have declined more rapidly in the absence of smoking, and they are likely to decline more rapidly in the future as smoking recedes.
Life expectancy at birth for whites significantly exceeded that for blacks at the turn of the 20 th century see Figure 2 and Appendix B Table B At that time, the expected longevity of a white newborn girl exceeded that of a black newborn girl by about For newborn boys, the white advantage was Notes : Later year estimates are more reliable than those of the early 20 th century.
The gap between whites and blacks in average longevity declined significantly over the past century Figure 3. For females , the improving situation for black women relative to their white counterparts was dramatic and mostly consistent throughout the century. From the height of the differential in —when white women survived, on average, A significant reduction in the life expectancy gap between American white and black men was also observed over the 20 th century. From its height of The improvement was most rapid in the first six decades of the past century.
Since the mids, however, improvements for males have stagnated in the range of roughly 6. While the male gap has been falling over the past decade, this trend obscures the fact that the differential had already been at or near this level for most of the mids to mids. The gap in was narrower than that observed today—at that time, the gap between white and black men was 5.
Factors that contribute to the differential are discussed in later sections of this report. In summary, mortality rates in the United States have declined dramatically over the past century. Black persons, however, still live, on average, 5. In , the most recent year for which we have official data, the highest life expectancy was observed for white females, who will live, on average, The values for black females and white males are quite similar to each other— Of the four race-sex groups considered, black males have the shortest average longevity— Within-sex groupings, whites have the advantage for both females and males.
What accounts for the higher mortality, and subsequent lower life expectancy for blacks, and especially for black men in the United States? This has been a subject of research by medical and social scientists for at least a century, and the issue stands at the heart of the current public health agenda in the United States.
Mortality from most, but not all, causes of death are higher for blacks, and a number of researchers have investigated which specific diseases contribute most to life expectancy differences between the races. Wong and colleagues, 56 for instance, recently calculated potential years of life lost related to specific causes of deaths for blacks and whites in the United States Table 5.
Source : CRS adaptation from M. Notes : Calculations adjust for differences between races in age, sex, and level of education; numbers in parentheses show causes-of-death for which blacks fare better than whites; and these estimates are for persons dying before the age of 75 years though the authors state that all results were similar when potential life-years lost before the age of 85 years were examined.
Note that trends and racial differentials at the oldest ages 85 and older differ as black mortality rates are lower than those of whites for both men and women in official mortality data from NCHS. See Appendix B Table B As seen in Table 5 , when considering the major categories of disease, deaths from cardiovascular disease contributed most to the racial disparity in mortality from any cause When looking at specific diseases, the leading sources of the disparity were largely preventable causes of premature death—hypertension which contributed Note that blacks had a lower mortality risk from respiratory diseases lung disease , suicide, and certain types of cancer breast, colon, uterus or ovary, bladder or kidney, and leukemia or lymphoma; figures are in the original source but are not shown in table.
These results are consistent with findings from other studies, 57 and are said to show that "most of the influential diseases are ones in which the rates vary based on avoidable risks such as smoking, exposure to HIV, and obesity.
Beyond describing gross health disparities, scientific inquiry has shifted to explaining the underlying factors that account for these differences in health outcomes.
Understanding these underlying causes requires disentangling the complex web of factors connecting the nexus among race, socioeconomic status, behavioral factors, and health. Socioeconomic arguments cite the consequences of lifelong poverty. Relevant factors include both early-life differences, such as birth weight and childhood nutrition, and mid-life variables such as access to employer-provided health insurance, the strain of physically demanding work, and exposure to a broad range of toxins, both behavioral e.
Over the life cycle, these factors combine to increase the demand for health care, while potentially limiting consumption of necessary health services. In late life, these factors may affect the age of onset of both morbidity and disability, the severity of symptoms, and ultimately the age at, and cause of death. In addition, Martin and Soldo 64 note that there are differences between racial groups in norms regarding not only lifestyle and self-care behaviors, but also in access to health care providers and treatment compliance.
Moreover, the experience of racial discrimination may have adverse psychological and physiological effects, in addition to limiting the quantity and quality of health care received. Some of these factors that contribute to the racial gap in life expectancy will be discussed briefly in the following paragraphs. In general, as income increases, mortality decreases, because high income provides access to high-quality health care, diet, housing, and health insurance. Black households had the lowest median income in the United States in In , Recent research also highlights the enduring effects of education.
Increased education appears to lower the risks for some chronic diseases—most notably, coronary heart disease which is the leading cause of death in the United States —while retarding the pace of disease progression for other conditions.
Marriage is also a socioeconomic determinant that is related to health outcomes. Married people consistently exhibit lower levels of mortality than those who are not married. Marriage acts to select healthy individuals, but it also enhances social integration and encourages healthful behaviors. Black married couples are more likely to break up than white married couples, and black divorcees are less likely to remarry than white divorcees.
One explanation offered by some researchers for the lower proportion of time spent in marriage among black Americans is the idea of a "marriage squeeze," in which the "marriageable pool" of black men is low due to high rates of joblessness, incarceration, and mortality.
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