Life-span differences

-- a recent study indicates that the us has some of the longest-lived and the shortest-lived populations in the world. On one hand, Asian women in northern New Jersey have a life expectancy of 97.7 years, and on the other, Oglala Sioux men of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota live an average of 56.5 years. The study was conducted by epidemiologists at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. While the finding that different ethnic, racial and regional populations in the nation have different life spans is not new, the size of the differences is larger than previously believed. The world's shortest-lived national population is men in the West African country of Sierra Leone, who live an average of 45 years. The population with the greatest longevity is Japanese women, whose life expectancy is 83 years. The difference between those two groups is 38 years, slightly less than the gulf that separates male Oglala Sioux Indians and Asian women in Bergen County, New Jersey.