Table 1.

Cause-specific components of the black-white gap in life expectancy in the United States in 2000 and 2010, and total percentages of deaths due to each cause

ICD-10 cause of death	Gap in 2000		Gap in 2010		% of total
	Years of gap	% of gap	Years of gap	% of gap	deaths due to this causea
Chronic diseases
1 Heart diseases	1.49	26.2	1.02	26.5	28.2
2 Cancers	0.53	9.4	0.41	10.7	22.6
3 Cerebrovascular diseases	0.39	6.8	0.25	6.6	6.7
4 Chronic lower respiratory diseases	0.24	4.1	0.18	4.8	4.6
5 Alzheimer's	0.16	2.8	0.16	4.1	2.8
6 Diabetes	0.08	1.5	0.07	1.7	3.4
7 Nephritis	0.08	1.4	0.06	1.6	2.4
Totals for chronic diseases	2.97	52.1	2.15	56.0	70.6
Communicable diseases
8 Influenza and pneumonia	0.18	3.2	0.08	2.1	2.4
9 Septicemia	0.04	0.6	0.03	0.8	1.7
10 HIV/AIDS	0.40	7.1	0.20	5.3	0.7
11 Other infectious diseases	0.05	0.8	0.06	1.5	0.7
Totals for communicable diseases	0.67	11.7	0.37	9.7	5.5
External causes
12 Homicide	0.53	9.3	0.50	13.1	0.8
13 Suicide	−0.10	−1.8	−0.18	−4.8	0.8
14 Traffic accident	0.00	0.1	−0.01	−0.2	1.1
15 Accidental poisoning	0.01	0.2	−0.19	−4.9	0.7
16 Other external causes	0.14	2.5	0.13	3.4	1.8
Totals for external causes	0.59	10.3	0.25	6.5	5.0
Infant and child conditions
17 Perinatal deaths	0.41	7.2	0.29	7.7	0.5
18 Congenital anomalies	0.05	0.8	0.04	1.0	0.3
Totals for infant and child conditions	0.46	8.0	0.33	8.7	0.8
Aggregated minor causes
19 NEC - Not elsewhere classified	1.02	17.9	0.73	19.0	18.1
Grand Total	5.70	100.0	3.84	100.0	100.0

^aSimple average of the percentage of life table deaths for blacks and whites in 2000 and 2010.