Less wealth, lower life expectancy

Life is rich. Tragically, however, those with less money don’t live as long as their richer counterparts

It is the next frontier in inequality: not only are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, but the rich are living a lot longer, too.

Research by Gary Burtless and Barry Bosworth at the Brookings Institute and Kan Zhang at George Washington University shows that there is a growing gap in life expectancy between rich and poor Americans, particularly among the aged.

That the rich live for longer is nothing new: they have always had access to better food and health care. But what’s shocking is the fact that the gap is widening.

Burless and colleagues found that for men born in, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10% of earners and the bottom 10%. For men born in, that gap had more than doubled to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years from 4.7 years.

Mortality gains have been concentrated among the well educated

“Recent mortality gains have been concentrated among the well educated and those at the top of the income distribution. In that sense, life expectancy mirrors the pattern of increasing disparities in earnings and household income,” Burtless says.

The Brookings Institute results are backed by findings from Raj Chetty, professor in the Department of Economics, Stanford University. According to his research in “The association between income and life expectancy in the United States,14,” men in the US in the bottom 1% of income distribution at the age of 40 years had an expected age of death of 72.7 years. Men in the top 1% of the income distribution had an expected age of death of 87.3 years, so 14.6 years longer than those in the bottom 1%.

The relationship between income and life expectancy is little understood. But one probable cause is differences in health behavior such as higher incidences of smoking, drinking or a lack of exercise among those with less income, speculates Burtless.

Regardless of the cause, the findings could have big implications for social security, Burtless continues. Earlier retirement means low-income workers receive less money from social security each month compared with workers who delay their retirement. Later retirement by high-wage workers means they continue to collect big pay checks from their employers, while less well-paid workers only receive a pension. Finally, longer life expectancy for high-wage workers means they will collect pensions for longer, whereas low-wage workers see little improvement in life expectancy.

Less wealth, lower life expectancy

Life is rich. Tragically, however, those with less money don’t live as long as their richer counterparts

Less wealth, lower life expectancy

Life is rich. Tragically, however, those with less money don’t live as long as their richer counterparts

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