Life Expectancy for Rural Women Declining

Center for Rural Affairs

Two recent studies on life expectancies in the United States reveal troubling trends for many rural areas. As an advanced industrialized nation, you might assume life expectancies in the U.S. would increase and improve from generation to generation. But two studies show cracks in that assumption and neither is good news for rural communities.

Both of these reports have significant implications for services and policies in rural areas.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report Growing Disparities in Life Expectancy published in April 2008, finds those at lower levels of income and educational attainment experiencing declining or stagnant life expectancies.

The CBO study did not examine differences between rural and urban life expectancies. Given that rural areas generally have lower income and educational attainment levels, we would expect rural areas to have more people experiencing declining or stagnant life expectancies.

A Harvard School of Public Health study – The Reversal of Fortunes: Trends in County Mortality and Cross-County Mortality Disparities in the United States, also published in April 2008 – is more striking. It finds that in nearly 1,000 mostly rural counties, life expectancies for women are now lower than or essentially the same as in the early 1980s. That means that life expectancies for women in nearly one-third of American counties did not increase for the first time since 1918.

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