It's very surprising to see so little mention of race/ethnicity forces in this article, since I understand that to be a large part of the answer to the headline

It's very surprising to see so little mention of race/ethnicity forces in this article, since I understand that to be a large part of the answer to the headline question. There is a gap of a couple years between Americans from Asian, Latino, White, and Black/Native ethnicities (in that descending order). https://nationalequityatlas.org/indicators/Life_expectancy#/?geo=01000000000000000 https://nationalequityatlas.org/indicators/Life_expectancy#/... For Asian- or Latin Americans, life expectancy is comparable or favorable vs respective countries of ethnic background. This remains true for richer countries; Chinese-Americans have a life expectancy of 86.8 vs 85 in Hong Kong and 75 in mainland China. Meanwhile, Black and Native Americans live several years fewer than other Americans, and (at only 14% of population) account for ~1.6 years of the ~3.4 year life expectancy difference between the US and the G7. White Americans, esp rural, seem significantly worse off than European countries. These differences in racial outcomes seem to persist when controlling for SES: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2849870/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2849870/ (Not that any of my comment is in conflict with the causes pointed to in the article -- smoking, obesity, homicides, etc.)