Health and Healthcare

This Is the American City With the Shortest Life Expectancy

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: March 7, 2021 8:49 am

Last Updated: March 8, 2021 7:33 am

Life expectancy is one of the main measures of a population’s overall health. With the exception of the last three years — when the U.S. life expectancy dropped largely because of spikes in suicide and opioid deaths (coronavirus-related deaths have yet to make it into annual statistics) — life expectancy in the United States has generally been increasing.

According to the latest available data, a baby born between 2016 and 2018 in the United States can be expected to live 79 years on average, more than seven years longer than the life expectancy at birth in 1980. The increase in life expectancy at birth and the likelihood of living a long life vary considerably across the United States.

To determine the city where people have the shortest life expectancy, 24/7 Tempo reviewed 2020 county-level life expectancy at birth figures from the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. To obtain metro area life expectancy estimates, we mapped each metro area to its corresponding county.

The association between wealth and life expectancy is well established. Due to worse access to medical care, healthy foods, as well as greater stress related to financial struggles, lower income and poorer individuals tend to have worse health outcomes than wealthier individuals.

The cities on the list of finalists tend to have a bigger share of residents living below the national poverty line than metro areas with longer life expectancy. In the national context, all but three cities on the finalist list have higher poverty rates than the national rate of 12.3%.

Another common trend among the finalist cities with the shortest life expectancy is the tendency to report less healthy behaviors than cities with longer life expectancy. In cities with shorter life expectancy, a higher share of adults tend to report lack of physical activity and smoking, and obesity rates are higher too.

Obesity is associated with higher risk of serious diseases, including cancer and heart disease. Obesity rates in all but one city on the list of finalists are higher than the national average of 29.0%. Similarly, smoking rates in these metro areas are almost always higher than the national average. Only two cities report a lower smoking rate than the national adult smoking rate of 17.0%.

To determine the city where people have the shortest life expectancy, 24/7 Tempo reviewed 2020 county-level life expectancy at birth figures from the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR), a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. To obtain metro area life expectancy estimates, we mapped each metro area to its corresponding county.

Metro area-level population and health insurance data and poverty rates came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey. Obesity and smoking rates as well as the share of the population who reports no physical activity on a regular basis came from the CHR.

Beckley, West Virginia is the city with the lowest life expectancy at 73.0 years which is 6.1 less than U.S. average. Other details about the city:

> Obesity rate: 39.4% — 11th out of 382
> Smoking rate: 24.7% — 1st out of 382
> Adults who don’t exercise regularly: 31.2% — 37th out of 382
> Adults without health insurance: 7.2% — 226th out of 382
> Poverty rate: 17.9% — 47th out of 382
> Population: 115,767

Click here to see the 40 US cities with the shortest life expectancy.