Life Expectancy Reaches New Record

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:

1) Heart disease: down 5.5%
2) Cancer: down 1.6%
3) Stroke: down 6.4%
4) Chronic lower respiratory diseases (lung diseases): down 6.5%
5) Accidents: down 1.5%
6) Alzheimer's disease: down 0.9%
7) Diabetes: down 5.3%
8) Influenza and pneumonia: down 12.8% due to a relatively mild flu season
9) Kidney disease: unchanged
10) Septicemia (an infection that affects the blood and other parts of the body): down 2.7%
11) Suicide: down 2.8%
12) Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: down 3.3%
13) High blood pressure: down 5%
14) Parkinson's disease: down 1.6%
15) 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:

1) Guam
2) Hawaii
3) Virgin Islands
4) Minnesota
5) California
6) New York
7) Utah
8) Florida
9) Connecticut
10) Colorado
11) Massachusetts
12) Vermont
13) Washington
14) Arizona
15) New Hampshire
16) North Dakota
17) Puerto Rico
18) Iowa
19) Nebraska
20) New Jersey
21) South Dakota
22) Wisconsin
23) Rhode Island
24) Idaho
25) New Mexico
26) Alaska
27) Oregon
28) Maine
29) Virginia
30) Illinois
31) Montana
32) Delaware
33) Texas
34) Maryland
35) Kansas
36) Pennsylvania
37) Michigan
38) Wyoming
39) Nevada
40) Ohio
41) North Carolina
42) Indiana
43) Missouri
44) Georgia
45) South Carolina
46) Arkansas
47) Washington, D.C.
48) Tennessee
49) Kentucky
50) Oklahoma
51) Louisiana
52) West Virginia
53) Alabama
54) Mississippi
55) Northern Mariana Islands
56) American Samoa

RESOURCE/SOURCE: www.webmd.com on Wednesday June 11, 2008.