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U.S. Life Expectancy Hits All-Time High
After a century of nearly uninterrupted medical improvements
and longer lives, it looks like the baby boomers could screw
things up.
A new government study shows deaths from heart disease, cancer
and stroke continue to drop, but it also shows that half of Americans
ages 55 to 64 — including the oldest of the baby boomers — have
high blood pressure, and two in five are obese.
This means that this large group of aging Americans is in worse
shape in some respects than those born a decade earlier were
when they were the same age.
Medical improvements in coming years might offset these problems
before they affect life expectancy, but there are no promises,
health officials said.
"The late 50s and early 60s are a crucial time to focus on disease
prevention," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "It's
never too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle to enjoy a longer,
healthier life."
The report presents the latest data collected by the National
Center for Health Statistics and dozens of other health agencies
and organizations.
Among the findings: Deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke,
the nation's three leading killers, all dropped in 2003. They
were down between 2 percent and 5 percent.
Americans' life expectancy also increased again. According to
the government's calculations, a child born in 2003 can expect
to live 77.6 years on average, up from 77.3 the year before.
In 1990, life expectancy was 75.4 years.
U.S. life expectancy has been rising almost without interruption
since 1900, thanks to several factors, including extraordinary
advances in medicine and sanitation, and declines in some types
of unhealthy behavior, such as smoking.
Still, health officials are trying to draw attention to unhealthy
behavior, and this year chose to break out data on people 55
to 64.
The 55-to-64 age group is expected to rise from 29 million Americans
in 2004 to 40 million in 2014. That is because of the baby boom,
the explosion of births during the prosperous postwar period
between 1946 and 1964.
The report looked back at data on people who were in the 55-to-64
bracket around the early 1990s — basically, people born in the
1930s. Researchers compared them to people in that age range
today — essentially people born in the 1940s.
"What happens to this group is very important because it's going
to affect every other group," said Amy Bernstein of the National
Center for Health Statistics, which put out the new report. Among
other things, this group will be drawing on Social Security and
Medicare, financed by U.S. taxpayers.
The center found that rates of hypertension and obesity were
higher for the current group of 55-to-64-year-olds.
When the 1930s group was tested around 1990, 42 percent had
high blood pressure. That compares with 50 percent for the 1940s
group. The older group's rate of obesity was 31 percent back
then, compared with 39 percent for the 1940s babies now. Because
of the advent of cholesterol-lowering drugs, the prevalence of
high cholesterol actually went down, from 35 percent for the
1930s group to 23 percent among the 1940s babies.
Also noted in the report:
- Infant mortality in 2003 dropped slightly to 6.9 deaths
per 1,000 live births. Infant mortality has been on a general
decline since 1958.
- Spending on health care rose 7.7 percent in 2003, to $1.7
trillion. Health expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic
product rose to 15.3 percent in 2003, up from 14.9 percent
in 2002.
- Prescription drugs were the fastest-growing expenditure.
Spending on prescriptions rose 11 percent in 2003.
- Twenty-eight percent of all adults reported recent low back
pain.
Reference
Source 102
December
8,
2005
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