Americans are falling behind Europeans in lifespan, even among older and wealthier groups, a Brown University study found.

The study compared age groups and income across the United States and 16 European countries, ultimately including 73,838 participants between the ages of 50 and 85, and was published April 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The participants were followed over a 10-year period, according to the study.

“The results revealed that people with more wealth tend to live longer than those with less wealth, especially in the U.S., where the gap between the rich and poor is much larger than in Europe,” researchers said in an April 2 news release from the Brown University School of Public Health.

Wealth inequality has been on a steady rise for the last 60 years, according to the study, leading to richer Americans having better access to health care, earlier retirement and long-term care.

This translates to poorer Americans dying sooner, and until recent years, this trend has been relatively similar across developed nations, according to the study.

But in recent years, the life expectancy of Americans has been declining, even as some older adults become even wealthier than before, researchers said.

The difference is while wealthy Europeans saw a significant increase in their lifespan congruent with their wealth, rich Americans did not see the same bump.

“The nation’s wealthiest Americans have shorter lifespans on average than the wealthiest Europeans; in some cases, the wealthiest Americans have survival rates on par with the poorest Europeans in western parts of Europe such as Germany, France and the Netherlands,” researchers said in the release.

The study found people in the highest bracket of wealth had a 40% lower death rate, or higher life expectancy, than those in the lowest wealth bracket, researchers said. Overall, central Europeans had a 40% lower death rate than Americans throughout the study, and participants from southern Europe and eastern Europe had 30% and 13% to 20% lower death rates, respectively.

“We found that where you stand in your country’s wealth distribution matters for your longevity, and where you stand in your country compared to where others stand in theirs matters, too,” study author Sara Machado said in the release. “Fixing health outcomes is not just a challenge for the most vulnerable — even those in the top quartile of wealth are affected.”

So what is causing earlier deaths to become an American trait?

“There was more inequality between participants in the United States and participants in European regions in several characteristics; in the United States more than in Europe, wealthy persons were more likely than persons who are not wealthy to have ever married and less likely to be current smokers or to live in rural areas,” according to the study.

The least wealthy in Europe were also more likely to have a college degree than those in the same wealth bracket in the United States, researchers said.

“These findings may indicate that the relationships between wealth and education, healthy behaviors and social networks are more pronounced in the United States than in Europe,” researchers said.

As of October, the average life expectancy for all Americans is 77.5 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Women outlive men 80.2 years to 74.8 years, on average, according to the CDC.

The research team includes Machado, Ilias Kyriopoulos, E. John Orav and Irene Papanicolas.

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