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Growing Disparities in Life Expectancy 1 (April 2008)

handle is hein.congrec/cbo8641 and id is 1 raw text is: A series of issue summaries from the Congressional Budget Office APRIL 17, 2008 Growing Disparities in Life Expectancy Life expectancy has been increasing in the United States in recent decades, resulting in welcome gains for individ- uals but higher costs for federal programs.1 Improve- ments in life expectancy at birth have occurred for both men and women and across races. Life expectancy at birth for men born in 2004 was 75.2 years, almost 10 years longer than men born in 1950. Life expectancy for women born in 2004 was 80.4 years, more than 9 years greater than for women born in 1950.2 1. Life expectancy is the number of additional years an individual is expected to live at a given age. In this issue brief, life expectancy refers to period life expectancy, which is calculated using current death rates. Period life expectancies are generally lower than cohort life expectancies (which are calculated using projected death rates for a given cohort) because death rates generally fall over time. Life expectancy at birth for blacks has risen since 1950 but remains noticeably lower than that for whites.3 Life expectancy for black men has grown about as much as that for white men, but that means the six-year gap between them has been maintained (see Figure 1). By contrast, black women have experienced disproportion- ately large gains in life expectancy at birth over the 1950- 2004 period. As a result, life expectancy has risen more for black women than for white women, halving the gap between them but still leaving a difference of more than 2. National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2007 (Hyattsville, Md., 2007), Table 27. 3. The life expectancy figures discussed here for blacks in 1950 are those for all nonwhite races.

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