CDC: Southerners have shorter life expectancies in U.S.

If you were born in the U.S. South, you should expect to have a shorter life than other Americans. In fact, the National Vital Statistics Report shows West Virginians can expect to live 6.6 fewer years than Hawaiians.

The report, released today by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presents complete period life tables for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia by sex based on age-specific death rates in 2018.

The 10 states with the shortest life expectancies are:

Missouri: 76.6 years

South Carolina: 76.5

Arkansas: 75.6

Oklahoma: 75.6

Louisiana: 75.6

Tennessee: 75.5

Kentucky: 75.3

Alabama: 75.1

Mississippi: 74.6

West Virginia: 74.4

Georgia escaped the bottom 10, but not by much. At No. 38, Georgians have a life expectancy of 77.2 years — 74.7 for males, 79.7 for females.

The difference in life expectancy between the sexes was five years in 2018, ranging from a high of 6.2 years in New Mexico to a low of 3.8 years in Utah.

“With a few exceptions, the states with the largest sex differences are those with lower life expectancy at birth, while the smallest sex differences are found mostly among states with higher life expectancy,” the CDC wrote.

This report is the first yearly complete period life tables for the 50 states and the District of Columbia and represents the first in a planned series of annual state life tables.

Complete period state life tables historically have been published once a decade as part of the decennial life table program, beginning with the set for the 1939–1941. Only one other set of state level tables has been published, by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Life expectancy in the U.S dropped a staggering one year during the first half of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic caused its first wave of deaths, the CDC reported in February.

Minorities suffered the biggest impact, with Black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics nearly two years, the CDC’s preliminary estimates found.

“This is a huge decline,” Robert Anderson, who oversees the numbers for the CDC, told the Associated Press. “You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find a decline like this.”