By Allison Bell | November 18, 2020 at 10:17 AM
In 2018, baby boys
in the top socioeconomic category could expect to live 7.4 years longer than
baby boys in the lowest category.
This chart is based on results from one of the
data visualization tools Magali Barbieri created for the SOA. (Credit: Magali
Barbieri)
A
demographer with the University of California-Berkeley says the gap between the
life expectancy of the U.S. residents in the top socioeconomic status category
and U.S. residents in the lowest category grew sharply between 1999 and 2018.
In
1999, for example, a baby girl born into a family in the top 10% of the
population in terms of socioeconomic status could expect to live to age 81.3
years, or 3.4 years longer than a baby girl born into the bottom decile.
In
2018, a baby girl born into the top decile could expect to live 5.9 years
longer than a baby girl born in the bottom decile.
For
boys, the life expectancy gap at birth increased from 5.5 years in 1999 to 7.3
years in 2018.
Barbieri
found similar gap widening occurring for U.S. residents for other age groups.
For annuity issuers, for example, one key age group is people turning 65. Some
people retire at age 65 and then shift part or all of their retirement savings
into annuities that offer lifetime income benefits.
For
men, the life expectancy gap at age 65 increased to 3.1 years in 2018, from 1.8
years in 1999.
For
women, the gap increased to 1.7 years, from 1.3 years.
Resources
·
Barbieri
study resources are available here.
·
An
article about the lifespan of teachers is available here.
Barbieri
prepared the report for several subgroups at the Society of Actuaries (SOA),
which posted the report and a collection of related resources, including a set
of data graphing tools, on its website.
The
SOA says in a disclaimer note that the views expressed in the report are those
of the author, and that many factors go into overall mortality and mortality
improvement trends.
The Methods
In
the executive summary, Barbieri says that she created county-level
socioeconomic status scores using data on factors such as education,
occupation, employment, and housing price and quality from the U.S. Census
Bureau’s American Community Survey, in addition to income. She then created
socioeconomic category life expectancy figures by using the
socioeconomic status scores and county population figures.
She
broke the population down by socioeconomic status deciles, and also by
socioeconomic status quintiles, or fifths.
She’s
now working on extending the scope of her analysis back to 1982, and to look at
mortality for people over the age of 85.
Data Details
“The
ratio of the probabilities of dying in every decile to the U.S. average shows
that disparities are largest for children and for adults between the ages of 40
and 60, with nearly mirror images for each sex,” Barbieri writes. “The excess
(or deficit) declines to around 10% at ages 80 and above.”
Barbieri
found stabilization in life expectancy at birth between 2010 and 2014, and a
decline from 2014 through 2017.
She
says life expectancy improvement was slower than the level of improvement in
other wealthy countries even before 2010, and that the gap has widened since
then.
Japan
has the highest life expectancy in the world for women.
Compared
to Japan, “even the U.S. population in the highest socioeconomic decile is
lagging behind,” Barbieri writes.
In
2016, Barbieri writes, women in the top socioeconomic decile in the United
States had an average life expectancy that was 3.4 years less than the
life expectancy of the average woman in Japan.
Overall
U.S. life expectancy fell from 2014 through 2017, Barbieri says.
“Though
life expectancy increased for all groups between 2017 and 2018, the COVID-19
pandemic makes it likely that 2020 will, again, see an increase in mortality in
at least some segments of the population, both from the virus itself and from
its social and economic fallout,” Barbieri writes.
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