Equity
Who does the system fail first?
The same system produces different outcomes by race, income, geography, and disability.
Black and white life expectancy, 2019 to 2023
Two lines that never meet. The vertical distance between them is the gap.
Read it this way The two lines track White and Black life expectancy side by side from 2019 to 2023: both dip together in 2020 and recover, but the Black line never rises to meet the White line in any year shown. The gap widened to 5.9 years at its 2020 peak and, at 4.4 years in 2023, remains wider than the 4.0-year gap recorded in 2019.
⊞ data table⬇ CSV
| Year | White life expectancy (yrs) | Black life expectancy (yrs) | Gap (yrs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 78.8 | 74.8 | 4 |
| 2020 | 77.4 | 71.5 | 5.9 |
| 2021 | 76.7 | 71.2 | 5.5 |
| 2022 | 77.5 | 72.8 | 4.7 |
| 2023 | 78.4 | 74 | 4.4 |
CDC NCHS, United States Life Tables · 2019 to 2023 · source
Legislation in play that touches equity
- Maternal Health for Veterans Act
- A resolution supporting the designation of the week of April 11 through April 17, 2025…
- A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5…
Counts from Congress.gov + state-legislation trackers, keyword-mapped to this Iron Triangle force. As of 2026-06-18. See the methodology note on the legislation dashboard.
Sources & methodology
- United States Life Tables, 2023 (National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 74, No. 6)
- United States Life Tables, 2019 (National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 70, No. 19)
- Mortality in the United States, 2023 (NCHS Data Brief No. 521), age-adjusted death rates by race and sex
- Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, 2023
- Healthy People 2030 (AHS-04), can't get medical care when needed, by race and ethnicity, reporting NCHS NHIS estimates
- The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014 (JAMA, Chetty et al.)
- Health Inequality Project, Online Data Table 1: life expectancy by income percentile and sex
- CDC NCHS, Health, United States, Table UnmtNd (delay or nonreceipt of needed care due to cost)
- CDC NCHS, NHIS Health Insurance Coverage Early Release, 2023 (uninsured by federal poverty level)
- AHRQ MEPS Statistical Brief #507, Out-of-Pocket Health Care Expenses for Non-Elderly Families by Income, 2015
- AHRQ MEPS Insurance Component, Statistical Brief #553, Trends in Health Insurance at Private Employers, 2008-2022
- CDC NCHS, Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2023
- CDC NCHS, Maternal deaths and mortality rates: each state and DC, 2018-2022
- Commonwealth Fund, Insights into the US Maternal Mortality Crisis: An International Comparison
- CDC, Four in 5 pregnancy-related deaths in the US are preventable (Vital Signs, MMRC data 2017-2019)
- CDC Disability and Health Data System (DHDS), using 2022 BRFSS
- CDC Newsroom, Over 70 Million US Adults Reported Having a Disability
- CDC DHDS Data Guides: Barriers and Costs of Health Care
- CDC NCHS, NHIS Health Insurance Coverage Early Release, 2023 (working-age adult cost-barrier baseline)
Per-chart citation straps carry the in-context detail; this is the full bibliography.