According to a report by the Congressional Research Service (PDF hosted on Cloudflare; archived copy here),
Although life expectancy has generally been increasing over time in the United States, researchers have long documented that it is lower for individuals with lower socioeconomic status (SES) compared with individuals with higher SES. Recent studies provide evidence that this gap has widened in recent decades. For example, a 2015 study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that for men born in 1930, individuals in the highest income quintile (top 20%) could expect to live 5.1 years longer at age 50 than men in the lowest income quintile. This gap has increased significantly over time. Among men born in 1960, those in the top income quintile could expect to live 12.7 years longer than men in the bottom income quintile. This NAS study finds similar patterns for women: the life expectancy gap between the bottom and top income quintiles of women expanded from 3.9 years for the 1930 birth cohort to 13.6 years for the 1960 birth cohort.
Apparently, all the advances in medical science and healthy living that occurred during this rolling 30-year interval were visited upon the rich a lot more than on the poor.
According to a different study (open; DOI 10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.0918; archived copy here) in JAMA Internal Medicine,
[...] inequalities in life expectancy among counties are large and growing, and much of the variation in life expectancy can be explained by differences in socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors, behavioral and metabolic risk factors, and health care factors.
In 2014, there was a spread of 20.1 years between the counties with the longest and shortest typical life spans based on life expectancy at birth.
—NPR
additional coverage:
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 28 2017, @07:27PM
Well, more accurately, you likely were right. But things are changing. As a recent Washington Post article [washingtonpost.com] noted, the racial gap in life expectancy has been closing for a while. Though it is important to note that your first stat has to do with people aged 65 and over: yes, the mortality gap has nearly disappeared there, but it still exists for younger age groups. For blacks who make to 65, there isn't much difference in outcomes, but there's still a lot of younger deaths due to heart disease, diabetes, etc. (Obviously a significant part of that is also related to poverty rates; poor whites frequently suffer from similar issues.) Even there, though, the differences are fading a bit as more younger white people overdose, commit suicide, etc., coupled with improved healthcare etc. for African Americans.