Life Expectancy

Women in large swaths of America are dying younger than they were a generation ago, reversing nearly a century of progress in public health and underscoring the rising toll of smoking and record obesity. Nationwide, life expectancy for American men and women has risen over the past two decades, and some U.S. communities still boast life expectancies as long as any in the world, according to newly released data. But over the past decade, the nation has experienced a widening gap between the most and least healthy places to live.

My column on Social Security got a big response from readers. One of the points made is the big reward retirees can get by postponing benefits until 70, if possible. Waiting an extra four years from full retirement age, now 66 for many, to 70 would generated an 8 percent annual benefit: or 32 percent higher than taking it at 66. Some disagreed saying people die early and should take it early: But according to life expectancy tables, thank you About.com, there's a good chance of living beyond 79 and a half.

In large swaths of the nation, life expectancy slipped in the decade that ended in 2007, particularly for women, a shocking development in the world’s wealthiest nation. Some communities — primarily wealthy ones — have some of the longest life expectancies in the world, but others, particularly rural areas in Appalachia and the Deep South and some poor urban neighborhoods, fare worse than many third world countries. This news comes at a time when the Republican candidates for president are universally denouncing a national health care reform law designed to reduce health inequalities and to remake a system that spends more than any other nation and gets worse results.

I grew up among scientists ambivalent about church. At age 10, I argued my friend out of literal creationism. We decided to make up our own philosophy, the basis of Classical Cynicism. We relabeled Christianity Paulism because Paul mostly wrote the New Testament. Confirmed a Methodist at 13, I thought Jesus was a cool guy. At 14, I argued my grandfather to a stalemate about his newfound faith in Joseph Smith. I felt a dozen witnesses to the golden plates bearing the sacred text of the Mormon faith were shills for a real confidence man. They were offered multiple wives.

WASHINGTON -- Murder and AIDS joined forces to reduce life expectancy among blacks in 1988, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said yesterday in its annual report on the state of American health. The report found that an overall health gap between blacks and whites continued to widen.At the same time, there was some encouraging news: Preliminary figures showed the death rate in 1990 of American infants took its sharpest drop in a decade.The life expectancy of a black male dropped from 65.2 years in 1987 to 64.9 years in 1988 -- the last year for which final figures were available -- primarily because of an increase in deaths from homicide and acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the report said.

WASHINGTON -- Life expectancy for black people in the United States has dropped substantially, continuing a four-year decline, federal health experts said yesterday.The drop was sharper than the one in the previous year, and it was large enough that it helped reduce the overall life expectancy for Americans, the National Center for Health Statistics said.The new data gave the life expectancy for babies born in 1988, the latest year for which figures have been analyzed.The figures also showed a further widening in the gap between the life expectancy for whites and blacks, a trend that federal officials and health experts described as alarming.

WASHINGTON -- Americans generally are living longer than ever, but the life expectancy of blacks is continuing to shorten alarmingly, the Department of Health and Human Services reports.In its annual compilation of statistics on the population's well-being, the department said that while life expectancy among the nation as a whole rose to a record 75.2 years last year, that for blacks fell to 69.2 years.It also confirmed that the rate of infant mortality nationwide dropped sharply last year from 9.7 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 1989 to 9.1 deaths -- the lowest rate ever -- but that of blacks remained at levels more than twice as high as for whites.

WASHINGTON -- The life expectancy of Americans has gone up another notch and infant mortality has declined, government statisticians revealed yesterday, but deaths among young people from AIDS and violence continue to mount.The annual report of the National Center for Health Statistics showed that in 1989 fatalities for 10 of the 15 leading causes of death declined, when the numbers were adjusted to eliminate the effect of the aging of the population.The average baby born in 1989 could expect to live 75.3 years, a record high, and the mortality of infants declined to 9.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, a record low.However, Dr. Marian MacDorman, a mortality analyst at the government center, said death certificates showed acquired immune deficiency syndrome and violence hitting hard at Americans in their productive years.

Stung by the type of national attention no city wants, Baltimore's health commissioner branded as unfair a Harvard study that found the city had some of the worst life expectancies in a comparison of 2,077 locales across the country.The study, by Dr. Christopher Murray of the Harvard University School of Public Health, found that Baltimore had the third-shortest life expectancy for men and the second-shortest for women. Life expectancy for men was 63.04 years; for women, it was 73.27 years.

Baltimoreans face the lowest life expectancy of almost any jurisdiction in America, according to a new study by the Harvard School of Public Health. City residents can expect to live 68.6 years on average, the study found. That is worse than in all but a handful of counties in South Dakota that include impoverished Indian reservations, and there has been little improvement since a study published in 1997. Longevity in Baltimore is much lower than in affluent Montgomery County, where it was 81.3 years, eighth-highest in the nation and trailing seven Colorado counties only fractionally.

How does one measure whether a life was a success, or a failure? Some would measure it by recognition, that is, how many knew the person's name. For others, the measure of a successful life would be the amount of wealth accumulated or possessions held. Still others would say a life was successful if the person made a major contribution to society - in medicine, sports, politics or the arts. By that standard, my brother, Marshall Stephen Thomas, who died Jan. 5, was a failure.

100 Years Ago A Look back at 1911 • Baseball was getting very popular, but airplanes were still thought of as just for racing and sport. • Popular books in early 1900s were "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," by Frank Baum, "Up From Slavery," by Booker T. Washington and "The Call of the Wild," by Jack London. • The first ever yellow pages and comic books were published. • Newcomers were flooding into America with the highest one day total coming in 1911 at Ellis Island, N.Y., of 11,745 immigrants.

There was a time Jameel McClain couldn't do this. He'd search for the right words, and they'd never come out. He'd worry about how his thoughts would be perceived and that it would sound like he was making a cry for help. And where he was from, there was nothing unique or dire about his story, or at least that's what he believed at the time. To him, it was normal to have only one active parent. McClain knew plenty of kids in inner-city Philadelphia who didn't have any. It was normal to worry about when your next meal was coming or where you'd lay your head at night.

More than half of the deaths in recent years in a quarter of Baltimore's neighborhoods were avoidable, according to a new set of assessments from city health officials that were released Friday. The data were collected in 55 neighborhoods and showed in stark numbers how wide the disparities are between upper- and lower-income neighborhoods, said Commissioner of Health Dr. Oxiris Barbot in a news conference to announce the results. "People are dying way too early, too young in many neighborhoods," Barbot said.

In large swaths of the nation, life expectancy slipped in the decade that ended in 2007, particularly for women, a shocking development in the world’s wealthiest nation. Some communities — primarily wealthy ones — have some of the longest life expectancies in the world, but others, particularly rural areas in Appalachia and the Deep South and some poor urban neighborhoods, fare worse than many third world countries. This news comes at a time when the Republican candidates for president are universally denouncing a national health care reform law designed to reduce health inequalities and to remake a system that spends more than any other nation and gets worse results.

In large swaths of the nation, life expectancy has stopped increasing and even declined slightly over the decade that ended in 2007, particularly among women. This historic reversal of a long-time trend toward longer life expectancies in the world's richest nation is virtually unique in the developed world and appears largely due to the growing inequality of American society. To be sure, this week's report by researchers at Washington University's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that many American communities — especially those in wealthy enclaves along both coasts and in South Florida — were home to some of the longest-lived citizens in the world, comparable to people in Switzerland and Japan.

Today's young Americans might be the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents because obesity will shave two to five years off the average life expectancy by 2050, a new study asserts. The pessimistic report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, challenges expectations about ever-increasing longevity and rebukes government demographers for not including the future toll of obesity in their calculations. Obesity already reduces life expectancy by four to nine months on average, and if trends continue it could take as great a toll as accidental deaths or cancer, the study concludes.

Caring for an aging pet is much like caring for any aging family member, in that they can have many of the same health problems as humans: cancer, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, vision and hearing loss, kidney failure and obesity. Just as the life expectancy for humans has expanded over the past 50 years, so it has for household cats and dogs. And just as medical care for humans has become high-tech, so it has for pets. Indeed, almost any medical procedure done on humans can now be performed on these companion animals.

Women in large swaths of America are dying younger than they were a generation ago, reversing nearly a century of progress in public health and underscoring the rising toll of smoking and record obesity. Nationwide, life expectancy for American men and women has risen over the past two decades, and some U.S. communities still boast life expectancies as long as any in the world, according to newly released data. But over the past decade, the nation has experienced a widening gap between the most and least healthy places to live.

Maryland ranks as the fifth worst state to retire, at least according to a recent ranking that accounted for climate, crime, life expectancy, taxes and the cost of living. The only states worse than here are, in order: Nevada, Michigan, Alaska and South Carolina, according to MoneyRates.com, a financial site. Best places to spend your golden years? New Hampshire is No. 1, followed by Hawaii, South and North Dakota, Iowa, Virginia, Utah, Connecticut, Vermont and Idaho. But the retirement equation is often more complex than a ranking based off raw data.