Your ZIP Code Determines Your Life Expectancy, But Not in These 7 Places

Just how long many Americans will live is largely a reflection of where they were born.

For the first time, neighborhood-level life expectancy data covering most of the country were published in September, revealing large disparities. The joint effort by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation utilized death records reported by 48 states.

Life expectancies generally mirror demographics. Babies born into neighborhoods with more white residents, or those with high incomes and college-educated populations, tend to live longer. Communities with poor access to food and health care have low life expectancies. Major gaps are further present across neighborhoods in close proximity within the same cities. As a response, places such as Alameda County, Calif., and Kansas City, Mo., have launched initiatives aimed at advancing health equity.

We’ve identified several outlier neighborhoods, represented as Census tracts, from the data. Some have extremely high or low estimated life expectancies. In other neighborhoods, the normal assumptions about race, poverty and other demographic characteristics as they relate to health do not seem to apply.

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