To: FJB who wrote (934113 ) 5/9/2016 1:04:12 PM From: bentway Respond to Blacks Closing Gap on Whites in Life Expectancy newser.com New York Times . "The gap is now the narrowest it has been since the beginning of the 20th century, and that's really good news," says a demographer. An increase in opioid overdoses in white communities is partly responsible, but "there has been true progress for blacks," an epidemiologist at McGill University says. The homicide rate for blacks fell by 40% and the death rate from cancer dropped by 29% for blacks from 1995 to 2013. Those rates dropped 28% and 20%, respectively, among whites. Experts also cite a decline in black deaths from AIDS.CDC , while infant mortality among blacks has fallen by about 20% since the late 1990s. The overall trend shows huge improvement since the 1900s, when life expectancy for blacks was 15 years less than for whites because of a slew of reasons, including limited access to medical care. "But we need to be very cautious," says a rep for the American Cancer Society. African-Americans still die of cancer, AIDS, heart disease, and homicide at higher rates than white people. In fact, "the excess in premature deaths among blacks is the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every day," reports the Times.
