Poor and middle-class Americans are much less likely to survive into their 70s than the wealthy, federal report says

Poorer Americans are much less likely to survive into their 70s and 80s than rich Americans, a stark life-expectancy divide compounded by the nation’s growing disparities in wealth, according to a federal report.

Over three-quarters of the richest 50-somethings in 1991 were still alive in 2014, the report found. But among the poorest 20 percent of that cohort, the survival rate was less than 50 percent, according to the analysis by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional research agency.