While people in Japan, Canada, and other nations are enjoying significant gains in life expectancy every year, most counties within the United States are falling behind, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the UW.
IHME researchers, in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London, found that between 2000 and 2007, more than 80 percent of counties fell in standing against the average of the 10 nations with the best life expectancies in the world, known as the international frontier.
Five counties in Mississippi have the lowest life expectancies for women, all below 74.5 years, putting them behind nations such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Peru. Four of those counties, along with Humphreys County, Miss., have the lowest life expectancies for men, all below 67 years, meaning they are behind Brazil, Latvia, and the Philippines. from UW Today