The routine reports of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) provide life expectancy data only for blacks and whites. In 2004, the life expectancy at birth for blacks was 73.1 years compared to 78.3 years for whites.7 If blacks could improve their life expectancy at the rate at which overall life expectancy increased in the U.S. between 1980 and 2000 (an average of 0.2 years annually), it would take them 26 years to close the current 5.2 year gap in life expectancy! Table 1 presents life expectancy at birth and at specific ages for blacks and whites of both sexes.7 These data illustrate the complex ways in which multiple statuses combine to affect health risks. First, life expectancy differences by race, for both men and women, are large during early and mid adulthood and decline with increasing age. Second, at every age except the eldest, the racial differences in life expectancy are larger for men than for women. Third, factors linked to both race and sex likely contribute to life expectancy such that, at every age, black women have
