A new study has added to the increasing amount of evidence that women’s life expectancy rates in the U.S. have been falling for reasons experts cannot yet explain.
According to The Associated Press, a new study released Monday by the journal Health Affairs, found declining life expectancy for women in about 43 percent of the nation’s counties.
Using federal death data and other information for nearly 3,141 U.S. counties over the last 10 years, researchers David Kindig and Erika Cheng of the University of Wisconsin calculated mortality rates for women age 75 and younger. They found that nationwide, the rate of women dying younger than expected fell from 324 to 318 per 100,00, but in 1,344 mostly rural counties, the average death rate actually rose from 317 to almost 333 per 100,000.
Death rates for men rose in only 100 counties.
“The study is the latest to spot this pattern, especially among disadvantaged white women,” the AP reports. “Some leading theories blame higher smoking rates, obesity and less education, but several experts said they simply don’t know why.”
Data seems to support the idea that a college degree, higher median household income, Hispanic ethnicity, not smoking, and living in a higher population density area were among the factors the study associated with lower mortality rates for both men and women.
Where a woman lives also makes a difference, according to the findings. For instance, women living in counties in the South and West are associated with a 6 percent higher mortality rate than living in the Northeast.
“In general, we assume people are getting healthier and living longer, but that’s not necessarily true for women,” said study co-author Erika Cheng, a doctoral candidate and research assistant in the Department of Population Health Sciences.
“We were shocked,” co-author David Kindig, professor emeritus of population health sciences and founder of the Population Health Institute at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said of the findings. “We think mortality rates gradually are getting better, but that’s largely because we look at state and national data. . . . We were surprised at the extent of the worsening when you look at it by county, and that it was so much stronger for females.”
Women have long been outliving men. The average life span for a baby girl born today is 81, but a baby boy’s life span is only 76 years.
However, the gap has indeed been narrowing and data from the Centers for Disease control shows that women’s longevity appears to have been losing ground since the late 1980’s.
Two years ago, a study led by the University of Washington’s Christopher Murray also found that women were dying sooner, particularly in the South. Other studies have also arrived at the same conclusion, some highlighting steep declines in life expectancy for white women who never earned a high school diploma while life expectancy seems to be rising for more educated affluent women.
“The Murray and Kindig studies both spotlight regional differences. Some of the highest smoking rates are in Southern states, and the proportion of women who failed to finish high school is also highest in the South,” the AP reports.
Other experts cite the abuse of prescription drugs such as oxycotin as being responsible for the diminished life spans of some women.
Thus far, no one has questioned whether the ingestion of estrogen-laced drugs such as the birth control pill and hormone therapy for menopausal women is having any impact on women’s longevity. Estrogen is currently listed as a Class 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
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