For instance, life expectancy for white Americans is 76.8 years, but for black Americans it stands at just 70.2 years.
Infant mortality is twice as high for blacks as it is for whites.
Hepatitis B is much more prominent among Asian-Americans than it is in the rest of the population. And on average, adults with less education have higher death rates from chronic diseases, communicable diseases and injuries than more educated adults do. John W. Lynch, a researcher at the University of Michigan School of Public Health , has been investigating how broad societal issues might contribute to such inequalities. Using data supplied by the Federal Office of Management and Budget, the 1990 U.S. Census and the National Center for Health Statistics , the Michigan group discovered that relative income did indeed correlate with the overall health of a particular urban area. Not surprisingly, in many places the lower-income populations consist largely of minority groups.