What actually impacts life expectancy?
When we talk about the opportunity to live a long life, there are a lot of factors at play: we call these social determinants of health. In short, these are conditions relating to where people live and work, such as economic status; access to education, employment, and housing; quality healthcare; and food insecurity, among many others. Health starts at home, at school, and at work—sometimes long before any illness appears.
One in five Americans live in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, pollution, inadequate housing, lack of jobs, and limited access to nutritious food. Here are a few ways in which social determinants of health affect these communities:
- Life expectancies in urban areas are generally higher than in rural areas.
- Infant mortality among Black infants was more than 2.3 times higher than the mortality rate of white infants based on information gathered in 2015.
- Heart disease is 55% more prevalent in unemployed adults compared to employed adults.
Read on to learn more about these factors.