The study doesn’t explain why this gap exists. But, violence may play a role, and blacks also suffer from higher rates of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, she said.
In some communities, premature deaths are a common experience that should be addressed in schools and by pediatricians, Umberson added. “There should be interventions and strategies that address grief, bereavement and loss,” she said.
Paul Rosenblatt is a University of Minnesota professor emeritus who has studied racial differences in health. He praised the new study, recalling his own experiences interviewing blacks about family losses.
In one case, a woman who was young when her mother died acutely missed the wisdom, advice and help she might have received over the years. A young widower described the challenge of raising a teenager on his own. Someone else Rosenblatt interviewed had lost a sibling early and felt greater responsibility in caring for their parent, he said.
However, Rosenblatt added that not all the after effects of a family death are negative. “I would not wish loss and grief on anyone, but some people, as they grieve, get to places that could be called wiser, better grounded, clearer about the meaning of life,” he said.
“To the extent that African-Americans have significant losses and more of them earlier in life, that may mean that relatively speaking more African-Americans get to these more wise places at an earlier age,” Rosenblatt said.