Racial Gap Seen in Life Expectancy

Life expectancy is about six years shorter for blacks than whites, and homicide is a leading contributor to the racial gap, a government study said Thursday.

Homicide adds about seven months to the gap, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in what it called the first report analyzing life expectancy by race and cause of death.

Overall life expectancy is about 75 years for whites and 69 years for blacks, the report said.

Heart disease and cancer were the leading causes of the difference. Life expectancy for whites with those diseases was more than a year longer than for blacks. Officials expected that difference because blacks often have less access to medical care.

The next leading cause of the difference was homicide. “It’s pretty dramatic,” said Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck, an epidemiologist at the CDC. “We were surprised to see that homicide is such a major player.”