Wide gaps in life expectancy between men and women in Washington state

Men in Washington state continue to die at an earlier age, sometimes many years earlier, than do women, according to a new statistical report by the Washington State Department of Health.

X axis: cumulative percentage of population / Y axis: life expectancy

The analysis found that men in general had higher rates of death from such killers as heart disease, cancer, liver and lung disease, diabetes, pneumonia and influenza, suicide, and unintentional injury, such as motor vehicle accidents.

Overall, Native American males have the shortest life expectancy in the state with African American men, who had the next shortest life expectancy, living slightly longer.

According to the report, a Native American male infant born in Washington state has a life expectancy of just 70.8 years and an African American male, 72.7 years.

For comparison, a white male infant now has a life expectancy of 76.8 years; a Hispanic male, 79.8 years; and an Asian/Pacific Islander male, the longest lived male group, 80.3 years.

In other words, Native American male can expect to live two years less than a black male, six years less than a white male, and nearly ten years less than an Asian/Pacific Islander male.

Differences between men and women

The differences in life expectancy between men and women varied by racial and ethnic group. But in each group, women live years longer than their male counterparts.

African American women, for example, have a life expectancy of 78 years, more than five years longer than a African American man’s. And they also live more than a year longer than white men.

White women have even a longer life expectancy, 81.4 years, nearly three and half years longer than an African American woman’s and more than four and a half years longer than a white man’s.

Asian/Pacific Islander women had the longest life expectancy of any group: 84.6 years—more than four years longer than Asian/Pacific Islander men, nearly eight years longer than white men, and nearly 14 years longer than Native American men.

Among women, Native American females had the shortest life expectancies, 74.6 years. Although that’s nearly four years longer than the life expectancy of Native American males, it’s two years shorter than that of white men and nearly seven years less than that of white women.

Death rates for most causes declining

The good news is that for most groups death rates for most causes of death have been declining, but not in all cases.

For example, while death rates for diabetes have been declining overall between 1990 and 2006, death rates for diabetes among African American men has increased 50 percent.

And infant mortality rates among Native Americans have been increasing nearly 4 percent a year from 1994 to 2006 and are now 10 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, double that seen in other ethnic and racial groups.

To learn more:

• Read the full report available on the Washington State Department of Health’s Web site.

Tags: Health Disparities, Health Policy, Life Expectancy, Public Health

Category: Health-care Policy, Men's Health, Public Health, Women's Health