Support NorthStar News - Make a Donation

video icon  Video of the Week

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (2010)

Search Past Issues

September 6, 2012

  • Tutu Says Bush and Blair Should Be Tried for Roles in Iraq War

    Tutu Says Bush and Blair Should Be Tried for Roles in Iraq War South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in a British newspaper that former President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be tried by the International Criminal Court of Justice in the Hague, the Netherlands, for their roles in the Iraq War.

    More
  • Plan to Graduate More Black Men

     Plan to Graduate More Black Men The percentage of black men enrolled in college is equal to their percentage in the population by Frederick H.

    More
  • Ryan's College Girlfriend Spent Time In Prison

    Ryan's College Girlfriend Spent Time In Prison Deneeta Pope, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s black college girlfriend, served five months in a federal prison after pleading guilty to stealing funds from Ernst & Young, one of the nation’s big four accounting firms. Paul Ryan TMZ, the celebrity news website, reported that a grand jury in November 1999 indicted Pope for allegedly swindling Ernst & Young out of $77,000.

    More
  • IRS Funks Up George Clinton’s Day with a Tax Lien

    IRS Funks Up George Clinton’s Day with a Tax Lien Funkmaster George Clinton may be in a funk after the IRS hit the legendary musician with another tax lien. Clinton failed to pay $7,457.89  worth of taxes in 2009 and $13,301.

    More
  • Oprah’s Rihanna Interview Puts OWN Ratings in Top 25 for First Time

    Oprah’s Rihanna Interview Puts OWN Ratings in Top 25 for First Time Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Target Market News (TriceEdneyWire.com) The second season premiere of Oprah's Next Chapter, featuring singer Rihanna, gave OWN its highest ratings for a Sunday premiere since the network's launch in January 2011.

    More
  • Court Shoots Down Texas Voter-ID Law

    Court Shoots Down Texas Voter-ID Law by Frederick H. Lowe The United States District Court for the District of Columbia struck down Texas’ photo-ID law, which the three-judge panel called the most-stringent in the country, after ruling the law would place a significant financial burden on racial minorities to obtain required identification to vote in November’s election.

    More
  • Judge Orders Ohio to Restore Early Voting Days

    Judge Orders Ohio to Restore Early Voting Days by Frederick H. Lowe A U.S. District Court Judge has ordered Ohio officials to restore three days of early voting prior to the November 6 presidential election for all Ohio residents, not just state residents who are in the military and vote by absentee ballot. The ruling by Judge Peter C.

    More
  • Judge Signals Intent to Lift Burden on Voter Drives

    Judge Signals Intent to Lift Burden on Voter Drives A U.S. District Court  judge in Florida has indicated that he will remove severe restrictions on community-based voter-registration drives, handing civic groups a major victory in the voting-rights struggle in Florida, a battleground state in November’s presidential election. Judge Robert Hinkle ruled in League of Women Voters of Florida vs Kenneth W.

    More
  • Four Years Ago, Blacks Voted in Higher Numbers than Whites

    Four Years Ago, Blacks Voted in Higher Numbers than Whites by Frederick H. Lowe In the 2008 presidential election, the first ever in which a major political party nominated an African American for president, black-voter turnout exceeded white-voter turnout for the first time in U.S.

    More
  • 47 Black Delegates Attended the Republican Convention

    47 Black Delegates Attended the Republican Convention by Frederick H. Lowe The number of African-American delegates who attended last week’s Republican National Convention was higher than in 2008 but lower than in 2004, according to “Blacks and the 2012 Republican National Convention.” The study reported that 47 African-Americans, or 2.1 percent of the 2,286 delegates attended the 40th Annual Republican National convention in Tampa, Fla., wrote Dr.

    More
  • NAACP Urges Blacks To Support the Justice Department

    NAACP Urges Blacks To Support the Justice Department The NAACP is urging African Americans to sign an online petition supporting the U.S.

    More
  • Convention Is a "Pep Rally and a Launching Pad’’ for Obama’s Re-election

    Convention Is a by Hazel Trice Edney CHARLOTTE, N.C. (TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Barack Obama is set to accept the nomination this week to lead America for four more years.

    More
  • Romney’s Campaign Wedge: Taxpayers vs. Welfare Queens

    Romney’s Campaign Wedge: Taxpayers vs. Welfare Queens Colorlines The issue of taxes is the Republican Party’s dog whistle on race.  Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan—engaged in a nail-biting political fight—have resorted to blowing it loudly and unashamedly.

    More
  • Romney’s Hoped-For Post-Convention Bounce Falls Flat

    Romney’s Hoped-For Post-Convention Bounce Falls Flat Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president, did not receive much of a bounce after his party’s national convention last week in Tampa, Fla., according to the Gallup organization.

    More
  • Peace Prize Winners Protest NBC War Show

    Peace Prize Winners Protest NBC War Show (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Seven Nobel Peace Prize winners, including Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa, are protesting the new NBC  show Stars Earn Stripes, which, they say, glorifies war and armed violence. In a letter to NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt, the Nobel laureates said, “It is our belief that this program ...

    More
  • West African Aluminum Refinery Remains Closed Over Wage Dispute

    West African Aluminum Refinery Remains Closed Over Wage Dispute Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from GIN (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Africa’s first aluminum refinery, in the town of Fria, north of Guinea’s capital Conakry, remains locked down five months after workers struck the plant in a fierce battle over wages.

    More
  • California Ethnic Voters Solidly Support Health Reform

    California Ethnic Voters Solidly Support Health Reform by Viji Sundaram New America Media SACRAMENTO, Calif.

    More
  • Michael Clarke Duncan, 54

    Michael Clarke Duncan, 54 Academy Award nominated actor Michael Clarke Duncan died Monday morning  at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a Los Angeles hospital, following a July 13th heart attack.

    More
  • Chris Lighty, 44

    Chris Lighty, 44 Chris Lighty, a hip-hop mogul whose roster of clients included 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, Diddy and Mariah Carey, was found shot to death behind his home on August 30 in Riverdale, N.Y.

    More
  • Hal David, Writer of Hits for Dionne Warwick, Dies

    Hal David, Writer of Hits for Dionne Warwick, Dies Hal David, who wrote some of singer Dionne Warwick’s greatest hits, including the classic, “Walk on By,” has died. David, who was 91, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Sept.

    More
  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History September 6 through September 12 September 6 1905 ----- Alonzo F. Herndon, a wealthy African-American barber and real estate investor, founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company on this date.

    More
  • Third New Judge for George Zimmerman

     Third New Judge for George Zimmerman Seminole County Circuit Judge Debra Nelson has been assigned as the new judge to hear the case involving George Zimmerman. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

    More
  • Acceptance Speech Moved Inside

     Acceptance Speech Moved Inside President Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech on Thursday night inside the Time Warner Cable Arena instead of outdoors at the Bank of America Stadium because of the threat of rain.

    More

Lost Decades: Longevity Gap Widening for Blacks, Latinos, Less Educated

by Paul Kleyman
New America Media

CHICAGO—The longevity gap between “two Americas” has widened since 1990, says a new study. One America is mostly white and well educated, and the other is ethnic or undereducated – and dying about a decade sooner than their more affluent counterparts.

The gap between college-educated whites and African Americans who did not complete high school is “simply unbelievable,” stated S. Jay Olshansky, lead author of the extensive new analysis published in the August issue of the prestigious health policy journal Health Affairs.

The researchers, who crunched mortality numbers in key databases from 1990-2008, found that white men in the United States with 16 years or more of schooling had a life expectancy at birth of 14.2 years longer than African-American males with fewer than 12 years of education. The gulf between well-educated white women and black women with low educational levels was 10.3 years.

The research study is published with the stark title, “Differences in Life Expectancy Due to Race and Educational Differences Are Widening, and Many May Not Catch Up.” It is the latest publication by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society, a roster of 15 leading academic experts in aging and longevity.

Low Education Shortens Life for All Groups

The report shows that lower educational levels marked declining life expectancy within every demographic group examined.

The gap between black women of high versus low educational levels was 6.5 years, and for Latinas the difference was 2.9 years. For males the longevity gaps were 12.9 years among whites, 9.7 years among blacks and 5.5 years for Hispanics.

What’s more, the picture for those with fewer than 12 years of education “has grown notably worse for whites,” says the study. In terms of educational status, “whites at the bottom are losing ground at a faster pace” than those at the top.

The gulf between white women is especially wide, says the report. Those with 12 years or less of education were living just over a decade (10.4 years) less than white American females with at least 16 years of schooling.

The two Americas—those with very high versus very low education—are in a longevity “time warp,” Olshansky asserted.

While those with higher levels of formal learning are gaining longevity dividends every year, those least educated have had life expectancy linger at mid-20th century levels. Although blacks have added years slightly overall, among those with the lowest education, longevity for African-American men is stuck at the average life expectancy the United States reached in 1954. For other groups with the least education, black women linger at the 1962 level, white women hover in 1964, and poorly schooled white men only live as long as Americans did in 1972.

Medical Advances Not Enough

According to the study, higher education directly affects health because increased learning prompts more people to adopt healthier lifestyles, it improves their ability to cope with stress, and enables them to manage chronic diseases more effectively.

However, the report says, education’s indirect effects, such as increasing one’s access to “more privileged social position, better-paying jobs and higher income are also profound.”

These underlying social and economic effects, the research group explains, is why efforts to modify behavioral risk factors alone, such as to reduce obesity or smoking, “are not likely to have a major impact on disparities in longevity.”

The ethnic disparities in education are sharp. On the one hand, among those age 25 or older in 2008, the researchers found, more than one-third of Latinos had less than a high school education, compared with one in six African Americans and only one in 12 whites.

On the other hand, says the study, among those who “enjoy the health and longevity benefits” of a college or post-graduate degree, about one-third are white, one-sixth are black and one in eight are Hispanic.

Without greater attention to education and its impact on social factors in health, say Olshansky and his colleagues, advances in medicine and technology alone are unlikely to close disparities by race and socioeconomic status. Nationally, he noted, increased access to good educational equity is apt to improve people’s health and productivity, thus reducing future demands on Medicare and dependence on Social Security—major budget issues in the presidential campaign.

They emphasize that expanding lifelong learning opportunities would be especially significant for those already in the workforce and who would find it very difficult to return to traditional formal education programs.

Olshansky and his colleagues warn that if the anticipated advances in medical science and technology continue without educational gains, by 2050 “the health and longevity gap between the two Americas could grow larger.”

They recommend that American society “implement educational enhancements at young, middle, and older ages for people of all races, to reduce the large gap in health and longevity that persists today.”

The Northstar News & Analysis, Inc.
Chicago, IL | 312.504.0223
Copyright © The Northstar News & Analysis, Inc.
Contact Us: info@TheNorthstarNews.com
Privacy Policy

My statusContact Us on Skype