White women in the United States are now expected to live shorter based on the data of a government report. The life expectancy for these women was cut by almost five weeks.
The Associated Press (AP) said in a report published by Yahoo Sports that data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compared statistics in 2013 to that of 2014. It was revealed that white women lost more than a month of their predicted life span.
The report showed that white women born in 2014 could expect to live for 81 years and 1 month, a bit lower than the duration for 2013. AP noted that the last major drop in the life expectancy for females was noted in 2008 which recorded a one-year decline.
NPR said though the dip is much shorter in 2014, demographers still worry on the statistic since it is specific now on white women in the United States. Though the study did not look into the cause of death, demographer Elizabeth Arias said she found troubling results when she expanded her research.
"For the age group 25 to 54, suicide went up," she shared. "'Unintentional poisonings,' which is mainly alcohol and drug poisoning, and chronic liver disease - those went up by quite a bit."
These components had effects on both men and women but females were said to be more affected. This conclusion was made after numbers revealed that the life expectancy of white males did not change in the said period.
Aside from these findings, NPR added that other death causes declined like stroke, cancer and heart ailments. However, it was highlighted that more people died due to liver diseases, suicide and drug overdose.
"There are people for whom life expectancy is falling - and that's happening at a time where everywhere else and for every other group we're seeing all these amazing gains in survival," Dartmouth's Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice professor Ellen Meara said. She added that previous researchers have also found that mortality is continuously declining.
