Title: Huge Racial Gap in Life Expectancy
Headings: This Chart Showing The Gap Between Black And White Life Expectancy Should Be A National Embarrassment
This Chart Showing The Gap Between Black And White Life Expectancy Should Be A National Embarrassment
Life expectancy at birth by race and sex, United States
It gets worse
What is killing black Americans?

Content: The stark differences the researchers uncovered are troubling, but the findings also suggest that — while access to healthcare and other factors are at play — improving educational opportunities may be a key part of making health disparities a thing of the past. While the racial gap has mostly been on the decline, the CDC explains that the widening gap between 1983 and 1993 (which is clear on the chart above) was likely due to "increases in mortality among the black male population due to HIV infection and homicide" at that time. What is killing black Americans? In a 2013 report, the CDC investigated persistent causes for the racial gap in life expectancy in more detail. "Higher death rates due to heart disease , cancer, homicide, diabetes , and perinatal conditions" accounted for 60 percent of the gap, the report noted. The report goes on to say that the gap would have been even larger "if not for the lower death rates for the black population for suicide, unintentional injuries, and chronic lower respiratory diseases." Below you can see what is disproportionately killing blacks (the dark blue bars) and where their death rates are actually lower than those of whites (the green bars). The gap exists because the higher death rates due to certain causes still outweigh any advantages. CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality
"Death rates for the black population [are] higher than those for the white population for 8 of the 15 leading causes of death," the CDC has reported. Black people in the U.S. are likelier to die from heart disease, for example, and white people are more than twice as likely to die from suicide than black people — but heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., and suicide is number 10.