Race, environment and health choices are the best indicators of life span according to a recent Harvard University study, opposing previous theories about life expectancy being directly tied to income.
The study, "Eight Americas: Investigating Mortality Disparities across Races, Counties, and Race-Counties in the United States" released Sept. 12, measured mortality figures from 1982 to 2001 across all counties in the United States. The team then related the data to a number of variables including race, income, education, access to health care and health-risk behavior, such as alcohol and tobacco use.
Nationally, Texas had the 30th highest life expectancy in the country, with the average resident living 76.7 years. In contrast, Hawaiians live the longest, an average of 80 years, while Mississippians came in last at 73.6 years, according to the study.
Texas had a higher life expectancy than some expected.
"I'm actually surprised," said UT nursing professor and gerontologist Graham McDougall. "With so much territory in the rural areas, people may have less access to medical care."
Christopher Murray, director of the Harvard Center for Global Health spearheaded the research and concluded that economic factors such as a lack of health insurance play a relatively minimal role predicting life expectancy. Instead, high cholesterol, obesity, blood pressure, and alcohol and tobacco use were identified as the primary determining factors.
The greatest discrepancy in life spans is between Asian-American women and black, urban men, according to the study. On average, the 5.6 million Asian-American women in the United States lived 21 years longer than the 3.4 million inner-city black men.
Norval Glenn, a UT sociology professor, said he believes that more research still needs to be conducted to find out why these disparities exist across different sub-groups.
"In the past, the expectation was that Asians may have a diet more conducive to life expectancy," he said.
Now that the study includes second-generation Asian-Americans who have adopted western diets and still maintain their longevity, Glenn said genetics is one new angle that should be addressed.
"The findings on persistent health disparities raise the question of why, as a society, we have failed to narrow health gaps between distinct and large subgroups of the U.S. population," Murray wrote in the report.
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