Study: Poverty has a 7-10 year impact on life expectancy

When U.S. counties are grouped by household income, men living in the poorest counties are expected to live 10 years less than their wealthy counterparts and women in the poorest counties live seven years less, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health and featured by Reuters.

The researchers regrouped all U.S. counties into 50 new “states” based on five-year average median household income and compared health with the 2015 County Health Rankings National Data. This process was intended to illuminate how socioeconomic factors affect health. The researchers found Americans living in the poorest counties had lower life expectancy than more than half of the countries in the world.

“These differences can be obscured when one looks only at state data, and suggest that practitioners and policymakers should increasingly focus interventions to address the needs of the poorest citizens in the U.S.,” the authors wrote.

Study: Poverty has a 7-10 year impact on life expectancy

More articles on population health:

Next Up in Care Coordination

Vermont hospital proposes moving pediatric beds into ED

Chronic disease vs. skipped checkups: How states compare

A Novel Ambulatory Cardiac Monitoring Program Transformed Efficiency and Quality of Care

More articles on population health:

Next Up in Care Coordination

Join the 500,000+ healthcare executives who start their day with Becker's