In America, Female Life Expectancy Drops… What The Heck?

Some ominous news: life expectancy has dropped for a �significant number of American women.� [Washington Post]

The last time this happened? �...The Spanish influenza of 1918.�

According to a study by researchers at the University of Washington, in almost a thousand counties in America, home to about 12 percent of America�s women, female �life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s.�

Where are the counties? All over, but most evident in rural areas �in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine.�

The most extreme examples are �two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women�s life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.�

The reasons? �Increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.�

It also has to do with obesity: �33 percent of women are now obese, compared with 31 percent of men. Extreme obesity is twice as common in women (7 percent) as in men (3 percent).�

�I think this is a harbinger. This is not going to be isolated to this set of counties, is my guess,� said Christopher J.L. Murray, a physician and epidemiologist who led the study.

And, it�s very American. �If you look in Western Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, we don�t see this,� Murray said.

Isn�t the future supposed to bring longer lives?

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