Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/longevity-study-finds-wide-gaps-between-races-classes Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript A new study by Harvard University researchers has found large gaps in life expectancy among different racial, economic, and geographic groups across America. Health Correspondent Susan Dentzer explains the findings. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. GWEN IFILL: Why do some Americans live longer than others? Race, class, and gender have long been accepted as factors. Less clear has been why some groups are at greater risk than others.In a new study, Harvard researchers reached some stark conclusions — among them, an Asian-American woman is expected to live nearly 21 years longer than an African-American male living in a major city.For more on what these findings do and don't tell us, I'm joined by "NewsHour" health correspondent Susan Dentzer.Susan Dentzer, let's — Susan, let's take this point by point. Let's walk through it.That remarkable statistic I just read about Asian-American women, is that good news for Asian-American women? SUSAN DENTZER: Well, it's — it is astounding news, particularly when you look at Asian women in the U.S. vs. Asian women elsewhere.There's a difference, in terms of life expectancy, of three years, as over and against life expectancy for women, say, in Japan. Now, that's the whole female population of Japan, just against the isolated pool of Asian-American women here in the U.S.But it's substantial. And it's striking, and it's a bigger magnitude of difference than we thought existed. GWEN IFILL: And, yet, if you're a — a black male living in the inner city, this is not good news. SUSAN DENTZER: Absolutely not. Now, it's not surprising news. We have known for a long time that that's — you have a lot of risks growing up in the inner city as a — as a black male, in particular.And what's interesting about the study, though, is why. You could think of some reasons that you might think it might be especially dangerous, high homicide rates, high rates of HIV-AIDS. But the researchers looked at those things. And even when you strip out things like homicide, HIV-AIDS, you get very large differences in mortality.And, interestingly, what they said that was largely due to was high rates of chronic disease. That's what causes these high differences, these large differences in life expectancy around the U.S.