Life Expectancy Reaches New Record
Life Expectancy Pushes Past 78 Years; Death Rate Falls for 11 of 15 Top Causes of Death
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MDJune 11, 2008 -- U.S. life expectancy has hit a new record: 78.1 years for babies born in 2006, says the CDC.

What's more, the death rate for 11 of the top 15 causes of death -- including heart disease, cancer, and stroke -- slowed in 2006.

That's what the CDC's preliminary data show, based on some 2.4 million deaths in 2006. Here are the highlights from the CDC's report.

Life Expectancy
Life expectancy in 2006 is about four months longer than it was in 2005, according to the CDC.

White women continue to have the longest life expectancy, followed by African-American women, white men, and African-American men. Those patterns have held since 1976, though all groups have seen their life expectancy improve during that time.

Here are the 2006 life expectancy figures for each of those groups:

White women: 81 years
African-American women: 76.9 years
White men: 76 years
African-American men: 70 years

Top Causes of Death
Here are the top causes of death for 2006 in the U.S., and the change in their age-adjusted death rate since 2005:

Heart disease: down 5.5%
Cancer: down 1.6%
Stroke: down 6.4%
Chronic lower respiratory diseases (lung diseases): down 6.5%
Accidents: down 1.5%
Alzheimer's disease: down 0.9%
Diabetes: down 5.3%
Influenza and pneumonia: down 12.8% due to a relatively mild flu season
Kidney disease: unchanged
Septicemia (an infection that affects the blood and other parts of the body): down 2.7%
Suicide: down 2.8%
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: down 3.3%
High blood pressure: down 5%
Parkinson's disease: down 1.6%
Homicide: down 1.6%
The decreases in the death rate for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and homicide may have been due to chance, and the kidney disease death rate held steady, so that leaves the CDC confident that 11 of the 15 leading causes of death had lower death rates in 2006 than in 2005.

The list's order is largely unchanged, except that Alzheimer's disease and diabetes traded places.

The preliminary infant death rate dropped 2.3% from 2005 to 2006, the CDC reports.

Best, Worst State Death Rates
Among states, Hawaii had the lowest age-adjusted death rate and Mississippi had the highest death rate in 2006, according to the CDC.

But if you fold U.S. territories into that ranking, Guam edged out Hawaii, and American Samoa ranked lower than Mississippi.

Here's how the states and territories ranked in their age-adjusted death rates, starting with the lowest rate:

Guam
Hawaii
Virgin Islands
Minnesota
California
New York
Utah
Florida
Connecticut:
Colorado:
Massachusetts
Vermont:
Washington
Arizona
New Hampshire
North Dakota
Puerto Rico
Iowa
Nebraska
New Jersey
South Dakota
Wisconsin
Rhode Island
Idaho
New Mexico
Alaska
Oregon
Maine
Virginia
Illinois
Montana
Delaware
Texas
Maryland
Kansas
Pennsylvania
Michigan
Wyoming
Nevada
Ohio
North Carolina
Indiana
Missouri
Georgia
South Carolina
Arkansas
Washington, D.C.
Tennessee
Kentucky
Oklahoma
Louisiana
West Virginia
Alabama
Mississippi
Northern Mariana Islands
American Samoa

This is really bothering me, I hope someone can answer my question, I'm annoyed that all of these this are going down and nothing is going up.

Also, on an unrelated note. When you put icecubes in water, then the ice cubs melt, the water level stays the same as it was after you put ice cubes in. So what is all this crap I used to hear about melting ice caps causing the water level to rise. THINK about that for a second. That doesn't make a bit of sense. Matter can not be created or destroyed either so there is just as much water here now as there was a billion years ago.

Also, on an unrelated note. When you put icecubes in water, then the ice cubs melt, the water level stays the same as it was after you put ice cubes in. So what is all this crap I used to hear about melting ice caps causing the water level to rise. THINK about that for a second. That doesn't make a bit of sense. Matter can not be created or destroyed either so there is just as much water here now as there was a billion years ago.

I never heard them say anything about the ice melting on land. I heard them say that the ice caps are melting. However, I didn't know what the term ice cap referred to obviously. Supposedly ice caps can only form over top of land. (definition of ice cap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_ice_cap)

So therefore I didn't realize we were talking about greenland and antarctica melting, yes THAT would increase the sea level.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/...polar-ice_x.htm

I was thinking about ice cubes and water. Glaciers. If all the glaciers melted then that wouldn't raise the sea level at all because they are already floating in it. Don't try to think about the density and all that nonsense, do an experiment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/blueplanet/end...periments.shtml

Ice has more mass than water, but is less dense (so it floats). So, when the ice in your glass melts, the level should actually go down.