
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990                   TAG: 9003300798
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Short

LIFE EXPECTANCY RISES FOR WHITES, BUT NOT BLACKS

Life expectancy in the United States has never been higher, but disparities remain between whites and blacks, federal researchers say.

Overall U.S. life expectancy rose to 75 years, according to 1987 data, the Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday.

That was up 0.2 years - about 73 days - from 1986, said Ken Kochanek, a statistician with the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md.

The life-expectancy concept means that someone born in 1987 would live, on the average, 75 years. Women, on average, outlive men by 6.9 years.

Overall, Americans can now expect to live about 12 years longer than they could expect 50 years ago; the life expectancy rate in 1940 was 62.9.

But while average life expectancy for whites was 75.6 years - up slightly from 1986 - life expectancy for blacks was 69.4 years, same as the year before.

And though the nation's mortality rate was down, annual black death rates were 50 percent higher than for whites - 778.6 per 100,000 blacks, compared with 511.1 for whites.

The greatest single disparity in death rates was for death by homicide. The black homicide rate in 1987 was six times higher than that for whites, the CDC reported.

by CNB