While the average life expectancy for white America is somewhere in the mid-70’s, a new report gathered by Huffington Post shows that only half of young black people expect to live past age 35.
Wow, only 35.
Thirty-five is when most people have their first or second child.
Thirty-five is when most people become financially independent for the first time.
Thirty-five is when most people move into their career that they’ll stay in 5 or more years.
Thirty-five is when many begin to contemplate “settling down.”
Thirty-five is still so young.
On November 15, 2015 the American Sociological Association and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior released the study, which asked more than 17,000 young people to predict their longevity.
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According to the Huffington Post, two out of three whites were optimistic about living past 35, compared with just 50 percent of young blacks. Some Hispanic groups were more pessimistic. Only 46 percent of U.S.-born Mexican Americans believe that they’ll reach 35. It drops to 38 percent for Mexican-born immigrants.
A passage from the report reads:
Uncertain (or pessimistic) survival expectations are emerging as an important marker of inequality in the United States, as adolescent pessimism about future survival has been linked to a range of deleterious behaviors, such as delinquency, fighting and violence, and suicide attempts.
The survey, which has been conducted since 1994, is reportedly the first look at survival expectations across race, ethnicity and age group. Researchers claim that Black communities’ concerns for our life expectancy is likely rooted in the fact that we are disproportionately affected by police brutality, violence and chronic health issues.
“We’re attributing this [pessimism] to structural disadvantages, exposure to neighborhood poverty and family poverty, exposure to violence,” said Tara Warner, a co-author of the study. “We also discuss in the paper experiences with the criminal justice system, experiences or expectations with police violence.”
If people don’t believe in their own life, then where do we go from here?
Belief has been proven time and time again in the medical community as a deciding factor to when it comes to someone’s recovery time from a traumatic incident. If the patient “believes” that he or she should be healthy, then their mind, pushes their body to do the necessary things to recover faster.
So is the opposite true as well? The real question now lies, what do YOU believe?
