One of the most disturbing trends in American public health is that women's life spans are shrinking in many parts of the U.S., while in Connecticut women's life expectancy exceeds the national average.
Women's longevity took an unprecedented nosedive during the past decade, researchers recently discovered, with their life expectancy tumbling or stagnating in one of every five counties in the country.
In Connecticut, New London County saw a drop in longevity, while Fairfield and Hartford counties saw significant jumps.
The last time life expectancy fell for a large number of American women was in 1918, due to Spanish influenza.
While many scientists believe that smoking and obesity are driving the downward spiral, a growing chorus of experts contends that chronic stress may be a key culprit, too — especially the stress of juggling work and family.
"It's a hypothesis at this point, but a reasonable and plausible one," said James S. House, a professor at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Women may have gained work opportunities over the last four decades, he said, but society has done relatively little to help them support their increased responsibilities.
"Clearly, obesity and smoking are things that contribute to chronic disease and reduced life span," said Carolyn Mazure, director of Women's Health Research at Yale, which funds interdisciplinary research on gender differences in health. "There is really no question in my mind that stress plays a role in that algorithm, especially for women. "
Life expectancy studies show that women's projected life spans declined or stagnated in 662 counties — more than 20 percent of the 3,198 counties in the U.S. — between 1999 and 2009. The largest declines are in parts of the South, Appalachia and the southern portion of the Midwest.
Even in counties where women are living longer, their extra years are often marred by chronic diseases or disabilities, says Chloe Bird, a senior sociologist at the Rand Corp.
The projections for women are in stark contrast to changes in American men's life spans, which had downturns in only 167, or 5 percent, of the nation's counties, according to a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
In Connecticut, women's life expectancy is 82.6 years for girls born in 2009, compared to 81.3 years in the U.S. as a whole. Overall, the life expectancy for Connecticut women increased 1.5 years between 1999 and 2009 — slightly less than the U.S. average of 1.7 years.
But within the state, there are differences. Life expectancy for women in Fairfield County is the highest in Connecticut — 83.7 years, which is a longer life span than the national average, and more than two years longer than that of Windham County (81 years).
In terms of change over the last decade, Fairfield and Hartford counties saw the largest jumps in female longevity, with increases of 2.2 years since 1999. At the other end of the spectrum, women in New London lost 0.1 year over the last decade, while women in New Haven, Litchfield and Windham saw gains lower than the U.S. average.
The troubling national trends have led to examinations of known mortality factors, such as smoking and obesity, with a newer focus on the role work and family stress plays in heightening those risks for women.
At Harvard University, Lisa Berkman, director of the Center for Population and Development Studies, says challenging social conditions in the U.S. have created a "perfect storm" that can damage women's health. Not only did women flood into the job market over the past few decades, she notes, but the number of single parents skyrocketed. Despite these major changes, the U.S. has created few policies to help women handle child care. As a result, there are "extreme stresses even on the relatively advantaged," she said.
Job stress can be particularly damaging for employees who hold jobs with rigid hours and high demands, such as clerical, administrative or production work, researchers have found. When Berkman studied women stressed by work and family conflict, she found they had more medical issues than other working women. She looked at women who worked in elder care facilities, comparing those who had rigid and flexible job schedules.
Women with rigid schedules were twice as likely as women with more flexibility to have at least two risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, being overweight or smoking, Berkman found.
Another study, by Harvard Professor Michelle Albert, concluded that women with all sorts of demanding jobs were 38 percent more likely to have strokes, heart attacks or cardiovascular problems, compared to women with less demanding work.