Tribune. The Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have both highlighted the disproportionate health gap between black and white Americans. Yet that life expectancy gap has narrowed by nearly 50% in three decades, largely thanks to improvements among black Americans, according to a study published in “Inequality in mortality between Black and White Americans by age, place, and cause and in comparison to Europe, 1990 to 2018” (Proceedings of the United States National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, October 2021).
Overall, significant strides have been made in increasing the longevity of black Americans in recent decades. But a dramatic mortality gap remains compared to white Americans, and even more so compared to France and other European countries.
Finally, white Americans also have a higher death rate than Europeans, even in the wealthiest regions of the United States. In other words, the death rates of black and white Americans still have large potential margins of decline in both high-income and low-income regions.
Access to health care
In 1990, black Americans lived seven years less than whites. But, in 2018, that number dropped to 3.6 years. Improved life expectancy in poorer counties has particularly helped narrow the gap between the two groups, in large part because black Americans are more likely to live in poorer areas. Reducing the number of deaths of Black Americans from cancer, HIV, homicide, and fetal and newborn disease has been particularly important in closing this gap.
Social protection programs, the supplementary nutrition assistance program, as well as the reduction of pollution levels in disadvantaged areas are factors that contribute to the reduction of mortality
Yet life expectancy has stagnated for all groups in the United States since 2012 and white Americans have even lost ground relative to Europeans in both rich and poor areas. The opioid epidemic in the United States is a major cause of this decline, but more work should be done to investigate other factors. Had the improvements made before 2012 continued at the previous rate, the gap in life expectancy would have been closed by 2036.
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