If you are poor, a minority, and live in either the American South or West, you are likely to die up to 20 years earlier than your peers.

That’s the shocking conclusion of a study published in The Lancet which tracked changes in life expectancy by geography, income and ethnicity over the past two decades.

It found that the gap between the longest and shortest life spans had widened by around 7.5 years in just two decades – up from a 12.5-year gap in 2000.

Nationwide, America has a life expectancy of 77.5 years, according to the latest CDC estimates.

But progress has stalled in recent years, with nationwide life expectancy then falling during the Covid pandemic, before recovering somewhat.

Native Americans in the West were the shortest lived overall, with an average life expectancy of 63.6 years in 2021.

Those who were black, poor and lived in the rural South were only a few years ahead, with a life expectancy of 68 years, while poor white Americans in the Appalachia region had the third lowest life expectancy at 71.1 years.

At the other end of the scale, Asian Americans had the highest life expectancy at 84 years, non-Southern Hispanics had the second highest at 79.4 years, and Americans in majority white counties had the third highest – at 77.2 years.

The chart above shows life expectancy in the United States by year from 1980 to 2022. There has been a slight increase in the last year for which data is available

For it studybased on data from the National Vital Statistics System and population estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics, researchers divided the United States into what they called the “10” Americas—based on geography, income and ethnicity.

They consisted of counties with an Asian and Native or Pacific Islander (AIAN) minority population; Latinos scattered across the country and those living in the western and southern United States; majority white counties, white rural counties, and white people in low-income counties.

Others included African Americans across the country, in rural areas and in segregated cities; and AIAN people in the central and western United States.

The researchers blamed the large gap in life expectancy on the distribution of resources, discrimination in society and barriers to access to education and healthcare.

Senior author Dr. Christopher Murray, a demographer at the University of Washington, Seattle, said: “The scale and scope of health disparities in American society is truly alarming in a country with America’s wealth and resources.

“These disparities reflect the unequal and inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities that have profound consequences for well-being and longevity, particularly in marginalized populations. ‘

The graph above shows life expectancy since 2000 in the 10 groups created by the study

The above shows the life expectancy for men and women aged 45 to 64

He added, “Policymakers must take collective action to invest in equitable health care, education and employment opportunities and challenge the systemic barriers that create and perpetuate these inequities so that all Americans can live long, healthy lives regardless of where they live and their race, ethnicity or income.’

Additional results of the study showed that white Americans living in northern areas had the fourth highest life expectancy at 76.7 years, while Latinos in the Southwest had the fifth highest at 76 years.

And black Americans in highly segregated cities had an average life expectancy of 71.5 years.

The study is the second part in the series, after the first was published in 2006 and divide Americans into eight groups.

Over time, the latest study found that life expectancy increased in nine out of ten Americas between 2000 and 2010.

Nationwide, America has a life expectancy of 77.5 years, according to the latest CDC estimates

But over the next decade, it increased in only six out of 10 Americans, and at a much slower rate.

Black Americans showed the largest increase in life expectancy during the study period, increasing by as much as 3.7 years during that time — though improvements have stalled since 2019.

They have also risen from being the group with the lowest life expectancy in the country.

The study’s limitations, the researchers acknowledged, include that there were large differences in life expectancy between people in each group in the study.

And the authors said there were significant differences in life expectancy between counties, even for those with the same ethnic groups.