Everyone knows the poor die sooner than the rich. Some humans can live past 90, but many don’t have access to the health and wealth that lets humans live a normal human life span. What fewer people appreciate is that the longevity gap is growing. As Boston University researchers Jacob Bor, Gregory Cohen and Sandro Galea found, income and education gaps in life expectancy have widened in recent decades. Since 2001, middle- and high-income Americans gained more than 2 years in life expectancy while the poorest 5% gained essentially nothing.
The race gap in longevity was also getting worse before the pandemic. In 1950, age-65 life expectancy for Black and white men was equal—each could expect to live about 12.8 more years if they had reached 65. Now there is a 2-year difference (moreover, 81% of white men make it to 65 compared to just 70% of Black men). The only wrinkle in the class-based story was that Latinos had an advantage, even though they were low income. Foreign-born Hispanic men can expect to live 3.2 years longer than their U.S.-born counterparts.
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