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Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

"Some health economists contend that the disparities between rich and poor inevitably widen as doctors make gains in treating the major causes of death. Nancy Krieger, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, rejected that idea. Professor Krieger investigated changes in the rate of premature mortality (dying before the age of 65) and infant death from 1960 to 2002. She found that inequities shrank from 1966 to 1980, but then widened. ?The recent trend of growing disparities in health status is not inevitable,? she said. ?From 1966 to 1980, socioeconomic disparities declined in tandem with a decline in mortality rates.? The creation of Medicaid and Medicare, community health centers, the ?war on poverty? and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all probably contributed to the earlier narrowing of health disparities, Professor Krieger said...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on March 23, 2008 (boomark / email).