The lifespan of Americans has shortened recently, reversing a decade-long trend. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), life expectancy at birth declined to 76.1 years in 2021 from 77.0 years the year before. From 2019 to 2020, the drop was 1.8 years. CDC experts wrote, “The 0.9 year drop in life expectancy in 2021, along with a 1.8 year drop in 2020, was the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923.” COVID-19 and drug-related deaths were primary contributors to the trends.
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Longevity, at least in relative terms, is not as great a problem in some states as in others. Hawaii stands out as the best example. The expected life expectancy at birth is 80.7 years. That is significantly longer than the next state, Minnesota, at 79.1 years. The states could hardly be more different in climate, population density, or cost of living. (Hawaii’s is the highest among all states).
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Most states where people live a long time are clustered in northern New England and the West and Plains States. Vermont is number three on the list lifespan list at 78.8. New Hampshire is number five at 79. The list of long-lived states includes Colorado (78.4 years), Oregon (78.8) and Utah (78.6 years).
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It is not clear why there are these clusters. “Healthy lifestyles” are among them. People in many of these states eat better, exercise more, and have fewer bad habits. Researchers at Life Extension pointed out, “Seven of the 10 states with the longest life expectancies also rank in the top 10 for living a healthy lifestyle. D.C. is a notable exception as our nation’s capital ranks No. 23 for life expectancy despite having the No. 6 most healthy lifestyle.”
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The far end of the spectrum clearly includes states where people have bad health habits and also tend to be poor financially, Notable among these are primarily southern States, led by West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
The State Where People Live the Longest
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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