Move to the suburbs, live longer
September 12, 2006
BY JIM RITTER Health Reporter

Harvard researchers today are reporting huge and growing gaps in life expectancies throughout the United States.

At one extreme are Asian-American females in Bergen County, N.J., who have a life expectancy of 91 years. At the other extreme are Native American males in six South Dakota counties, 58 years.

Researchers used data from the U.S. Census and other sources to calculate county-by-county life expectancies for babies born in 1999. Some life expectancy gaps within the United States are greater than the gaps between developed and Third World countries.

And the gaps have been increasing since 1984.

"The counties that started the best just keep getting better. Those at the bottom either stayed the same or got worse," said Dr. Christopher Murray of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, lead author of a study in PLoS Medicine, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. the rest