Montgomery County Residents Live Longer Than Almost Anyone in America

By Whitney Teal

Montgomery County residents are doing a lot of things right, health-wise, with both men and women enjoying some of the highest life expectancies in the nation, according to a new study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Data from the study, “The State of U.S. Health, 1990-2010,”  was analyzed by The Washington Post.

While the average life expectancy for Americans is 78.7 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, in Montgomery County, women can expect to live an average of 84.9 years—the second oldest age of any jurisdiction in America. Men live an average of 81.6 years—the fourth oldest.

Those numbers are higher than the last time this kind of data was analyzed, in 1985, when Montgomery County women could expect to live to be just shy of 80 and the average man wouldn’t make it to 75.

And if you’re thinking of hopping the border to Fairfax County, VA, don’t worry, it shouldn’t shave any years off your life. Fairfax County also was in the top five for life expectancy of men and women. In fact, both Montgomery and Fairfax, plus Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area, appeared on both top-5 lists, in a slightly different order.

Women Highest Life Expectancy, by County:

1. Marin, CA —85.0

2. Montgomery, MD—84.9

3. Collier, FL—84.6

4. Santa Clara, CA—85.5

5. Fairfax, VA—84.5

Men Highest Life Expectancy, by County:

1. Fairfax, VA—81.7

2. Gunnison, CO—81.7

3. Pitkin, CO—81.7

4. Montgomery, MD—81.6

5. Marin, CA—81.4

Nationally, though, the news isn’t all good, according to The Washington Post. Heart attacks remain the leading cause of death in the U.S., just as they were in 1990. Also, America hasn’t kept up with its peers in the developed world in terms of universal health care access or societal changes that may lead to a longer life, the newspaper noted.

“The country has done a good job of preventing premature deaths from stroke, but when it comes to lung cancer, preterm birth complications and a range of other causes, the country isn’t keeping pace with high-income countries in Europe, Asia and elsewhere,” Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and one of the study’s lead authors, told The Post.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Read more:

• Babies Born in Montgomery County Outlive DC Babies By 7 Years

• Is Howard County Really Healthier Than Montgomery?