United States: In America, how long people live can be very different depending on things like race, income, and where they live. This has created “10 different Americas,” according to a new report.
From 2000 to 2010, most Americans saw their life expectancy go up. But between 2010 and 2019, only six out of the 10 groups had a rise in life expectancy. This shows that health differences between different groups are growing.
And it steadied in all of the 10 in 2021 as the first year of the pandemic unfolded.
According to the results of calculation for 2021, Asian Americans are characterized by the maximum life expectancy at birth exactly 84 years.
That’s two decades more than the group with the lowest life expectancy: American Indians and Alaska Natives living in the West in 2004 with a expected life of 63.6 years.
As reported by the HealthDay, ‘these are very shocking because the extent and magnitude of health disparities in American society are appalling especially in a country with the wealth and resources of the USA,’ pointed out Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
‘These represent clearly unfair inequalities in distribution of, and access to, resources that have significant implications for quality and duration of life in discriminated groups.’

Murray is senior author of the report that was published November 21 in the British health journal, The Lancet.
This paper extends an earlier study that has categorized America into “Eight Americas” on the basis of race, geography, ethnicity, per capital income, and homicide rate.
These authors of the new report explained that life expectancy helps define health status of any given population group.
The participation rates of young Americans have declined across the region, widening the gap between young and old: In 2000, the difference was 12.6 years, and by 2021, it was 20.4 years, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the report.
AI/AN people in the West were the only group that saw their already-low life expectancy decline significantly before the COVID-19 pandemic began early last year.
They lost another 6.6 years of life between 2019 to 2021.
However, work to raise life expectancy in the Black population has stagnated as per the available report.
People in the poor rural counties in the south or in highly segregated cities died at age 70.5 years in year 2000 while Asian American died at 83.1 years.