Though African Americans have higher death rates before their 80s, after about age 85, their age-specific death rate falls below that of the white population, a phenomenon known as the Black-White mortality crossover. New research published in the Journal of Internal Medicine reveals that this lower mortality among African Americans persists to age 100+ years.
The study relied on data adjusted for potential misreporting of age, race, and ethnicity from the US National Center for Health Statistics—as well as other life table variables—to obtain life expectancy at birth and at ages 70, 85, and 100 years according to year, sex, race, and ethnicity.

When Asian population data became available in 2019, African Americans had the second-lowest life expectancies at birth in the US (74 years for women and 68 for men). However, after age 86 for women and age 88 for men, African Americans had lower death rates compared with whites. Death rates for Black and Hispanic populations became similar to the Asian population’s death rate around age 98, while the white population’s higher death rate persisted at these oldest ages.

The researchers hypothesize that African Americans who live beyond about age 85 are a select survivor group, with resilience due to psychosocial and biological factors that allow them to withstand socioeconomic disadvantages and other causes of higher mortality risk, which enables them to have lower death rates after age 85 and up to age 100 compared with whites.

“This study reinforces that people with different racial or ethnic backgrounds may vary in what characteristics determine how well and how long they live,” explains corresponding author Thomas Perls, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and geriatrics, and director of the New England Centenarian Study. ●