According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average person in the U.S. will live to celebrate their 76th birthday.
There’s still a 30% chance you will see your 90th birthday, and more people than ever before are making it to 100.
But there is a big difference when it comes to how long you will live if you’re Black.
A new study out of Tulane University reveals eight factors that play a role when it comes to race and mortality.
The study reports Black adults who live in the U.S. have a 59% higher risk of premature death than white adults.
“We wanted to do a big study to try to see if we could explain what is actually responsible for the differences,” said Joshua D. Bundy, assistant professor of Epidemiology at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Bundy believes disparities in eight socioeconomic factors are to blame, and they are all interrelated.
“Those who don’t have any high school education at all are at the highest risk,” Bundy said.
Education impacts employment, which impacts health care.
“Maybe you then don’t have access to health insurance,” Bundy said.
Income impacts access to healthy choices.
“Maybe there are good interventions for food insecurity, like providing food assistance programs and things like that,” Bundy said.
The study found home ownership is an indicator of what people can and cannot afford.
Even marital status matters.
“Being married may offer social support,” Bundy said. “There has been a lot of debate on whether this is some kind of genetic reason -- if it’s based on your genes -- if it’s something that’s predetermined or because of biology, or even just things like behavioral and lifestyle factors that may be different. But what our study is really saying is that it’s really explained all by social factors.”
Bundy believes by knowing how these things impact our lives, we can work to build systems to solve these disparities and hopefully see more people, of all races, live longer, healthier lives.
The CDC is also focusing on social determinants of health with its Healthy People 2030 initiative.
Researchers are using data-driven facts to help policymakers address the race-based mortality gap in the next decade.
Bundy said there is zero difference between Black and white adults for mortality risk once these eight factors are dealt with.