UCLA

The gap in survival rates for children in the richest and poorest U.S. communities has shrunk A deluge of recent studies has shown that poorer communities suffer worse health outcomes. Among low-income Americans, life expectancy at age 40 in the poorest areas of the U.S. is 4.5 years lower than in the highest-income areas ( 1 ). In 2010, infant mortality rates in the poorest U.S. communities were over 70% higher than those in the most affluent ones [see tables S3 and S4 in ( 2 )]. On page 708 of this issue, Currie and Schwandt paint a more complicated but encouraging picture ( 2 ). They show that, despite rising inequality in almost every dimension of American life, the child mortality gap between the poorest and the richest counties has shrunk in recent decades.