Half Of Young Black Americans Don’t Expect To Live Through Their 30s

On Monday, the American Sociological Association and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior released a report on the optimism of life expectancy for young people, for which white and minority youths answered questions about their life expectancy including whether they thought they would live past the age of 35. The findings from the report show that young whites, at a rate of 66 percent, are usually more optimistic than minority peers about the likelihood of living past 35.

The results are surprisingly devastating for the youth of color. Just 50 percent of black youth felt confident that they would live to be 35. Only 46 percent of U.S-born children of Mexican immigrants aged 12 to 25 feel that they will live beyond the young age of 35, and 38 percent of Mexican-born immigrants believe they will live through 35.

Researchers surveyed more than 17,000 adolescents, male and female, to get their opinions on their own life expectancy. According to Tara D. Warner, the corresponding author for the study,  57 percent of respondents were white and  23 percent black. The remaining the 20 percent were a combination of Latino and Asian ethnicities varying in country of origin and migrant status.

Source: Huffington Post