The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics published a report on Thursday ranking all 50 states life expectancies in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic.
They determined that the national average for life expectancy was 78.8 years.
Out of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the state with the highest life expectancy at 80.9 years was Hawaii. While Mississippi had the lowest life expectancy at just 74.4 years.
California also had a life expectancy of 80.9 years, but the difference between The Golden State and Hawaii was in the life expectancies of men and women. California men had a slightly higher life expectancy compared to Hawaii men, 78.4 years to 78.0 years. While Hawaii women are expected to live 83.9 years versus 83.3 years for California women.
The rest of the top group of states in order of highest life expectancy were New York (80.7), Massachusetts (80.4), Minnesota (80.4), Connecticut (80.3), New Jersey (80.1), Colorado (80.0), and Washington (80.0).
As for the states towards the bottom of the list with the lowest life expectancy, West Virginia just barely trailed Mississippi with an average of 74.5 years. Alabama (75.2), Kentucky (75.5), Tennessee (75.6), Oklahoma (75.7), Louisiana (75.7), and Arkansas (75.7) all had life expectancies around 75 years.
South Carolina (76.8) and Ohio (76.9) were also under the national average.
The report did not include data on poverty levels in correlation with life expectancy, but Elizabeth Arias, the lead author of the new report, told NBC News that the data would look very similar.
"When you look at the map of life expectancy, and if you were to look at a map of socioeconomic status — which includes poverty, education attainment — you would see that they would look very similar," Arias said.
19.5% of people in Mississippi in 2019 were living below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, while only 9% of Hawaii residents were living below the poverty line.
"Life expectancy really correlated with the socioeconomic status of the population in the area," Arias said. "Really well-to-do areas had really high life expectancies."
The report also found that the life expectancy of women was higher than men in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. for 2019.
"The difference in life expectancy between the sexes in the United States was 5.1 years in 2019, ranging from a high of 6.4 years in Mississippi to a low of 3.5 years in Utah," the report said. "With a few exceptions, the states with the largest sex differences are those with lower life expectancy at birth, while the smallest sex differences are found mostly among states with higher life expectancy."
Future reports on life expectancy in the United States will likely look very different, as the CDC reported in July that life expectancy dropped by a year-and-a-half in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the largest one-year decline since World War II, as the life expectancy of men dropped by a staggering 2.2 years, according to a study from Oxford University.
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