Newswise — Researchers have long found that general mortality estimates for whites and African Americans have consistently shown that Black death rates exceed white rates. However, there is limited information on historical trends in mortality rates between older black and white adults living in urban societies compared with rural communities.
A paper recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) assesses older adults living in rural vs. urban counties and the role racial disparities play in mortality rates. Nationally representative data was collected from 3,131 U.S. counties between 1968-2016, and the researchers looked at three types of regions: urban counties, rural counties adjacent to an urban county and rural counties not adjacent to an urban county.