A soybean farmer in Mississippi County, Arkansas.
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If you were born in the South, you are likely to have a shorter life expectancy compared to the rest of the United States, according to recently released data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings, published by the National Vital Statistics Reports, examined state-wide mortality and population estimates beginning in 2018, as well as state-specific population and death figures for older Medicare beneficiaries that year.
The CDC found that Americans are expected to live 78.7 years at birth, although women were more likely to survive men for 5 years nationwide, according to the report. The southern states faced worse compared to their northeastern and western counterparts.
West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina and Missouri rank among the top ten states in terms of life expectancy, respectively, according to the CDC. West Virginia, which had a life expectancy of 74.4 years, ranked lowest in both men and women.
“With a few exceptions, the states with the largest sex differences are those with the lowest life expectancy at birth, while the smallest sex differences are primarily among the states with the highest life expectancy,” they said. write CDC researchers in the report.
Meanwhile, Hawaii ranked first in the state with the longest life expectancy at 81 years old. The state of Aloha was followed by California, New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, New Jersey and Rhode Island to complete the top ten states where you will live longer.
The latest CDC life expectancy figures come shortly after a month after the agency released an interim report in February that found life expectancy during the pandemic fell one year during the first half of 2020, the largest decline since World War II.
According to this report, the CDC predicted that by 2020 the life expectancy of Americans at birth was 77.8 years.
– Reuters contributed to this report.