In absolute terms, life expectancy has increased, but we've slipped in comparative terms:
Compared with the rest of the industrialized world (OECD countries), America is falling behind. "These improvements are much less than what countries of similar income per capita have seen," the report states. The U.S. now ranks 39th and 40th out of 187 countries for life expectancy for males and females respectively.
And life expectancy is uneven across the nation:
The United States isn't uniformly underperforming in life expectancy. The county with the highest life-expectancy in the U.S. for males is Fairfax County, Va., where males live 81.67 years. That's better than the life expectancy of Japan and Switzerland, which are atop the list for worldwide longevity.
This is the second troubling aspect of the report: There's a huge disparity between the country's highest- and lowest-performing areas. For men, the difference in longevity in the top and lowest counties is 17.77 years. For women, that number is 12.37 years. Progress in national longevity can be attributed to increases in the highest-performing counties (and mainly among men). "Many counties have made no progress," the report states, "or for the period 1993 to 2002, there have been declines for females in several hundred counties."
The life expectancy of the U.S.'s poorest-performing counties is similar to the mortality rates of some of the world's poorer nations.
From a public policy perspective, the proper question is whether this report is likely to place life expectancy on the policy agenda. Given what we know about what factors drive items to the top of the agenda, this will happen only if life expectancy dips in areas of the country - and among constituencies - with political power. I have a hunch that is not the case.
