New York –
According to a study, the life expectancy of the US population fell by almost two years in the Corona year 2020. The research team found a huge inequality between blacks, Latinos and whites.
The life expectancy of black men fell to just under 68 years – that is the lowest value since 1998. White men, on the other hand, are just under 75 years. The US team’s article was published in the British Medical Journal.
Overall, life expectancy in the US fell from 2018 to 2020, according to the scientists, by a total of 1.87 to 76.9 years. The development was particularly extreme for blacks and Latinos, whose life expectancy fell by more than three years, according to the study. The development in the USA is much more drastic than in 16 selected, comparable industrialized countries. There, the decrease in the average expected life is around 0.22 years – overall life expectancy is 4.7 years higher than in America.
Researchers around Steven Woolf from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond see the reasons for this as being fundamental structural problems in the USA: a long-lasting and widening disadvantage in health care, “high death rates in 2020 and persistent injustice against racial people and ethnic minorities ”, are the result of political decisions and systemic racism. (dpa)
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