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Depending on where you live in the U.S., your life expectancy could be less than people living in Honduras, El Salvador and the Philippines.

That's the conclusion of a new study, which found life expectancies in many U.S. counties falling below the levels of the world's healthiest countries. In particular, Americans living in counties in Appalachia, the Deep South, and Northern Texas live the shortest lives, said researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and the Imperial College of London.

Average lifespans in more than 80 percent of counties in the U.S. fell below rates in the 10 nations with the best life expectancies. The study covers the years 2000 through 2007.

Men and women in some Mississippi counties had the lowest life expectancies. In five counties, for example, women's life expectancy was below 74.5 years. That's lower than Honduras, El Salvador and Peru. Men in our of those counties and in Humphreys County, Miss., had a life expectancy of less than 67 years--lower than Brazil, Latvia and the Philippines.

"Despite the fact that the US spends more per capita than any other nation on health, eight out of every 10 counties are not keeping pace in terms of health outcomes," said Dr. Christopher Murray, one of the paper's co-authors. "That's a staggering statistic."

Women in 1,373 counties, 40 percent of all U.S. counties, were five years or more behind the nations with the best life expectancies. Men fared better; they were behind by five years in about half that many counties.

Black men and women have lower life expectancies than white men and women in all counties. For black women life expectancy ranged from 69.6 to 82.6 years, and for black men, from 59.4 to 77.2 years, well below averages in healthy nations.

The news in the study isn't all bad. Women in Collier, Fla., live 86 years on average, better than France, Switzerland and Spain. And men in Fairfax County, Va., live to be 81.1 years on average, which is higher than life expectancies in Japan and Australia.

The study, "Falling behind: Life expectancy in US counties from 2000 to 2007 in an international context," is published June 15 in Biomed Central's open-access journal Population Health Metrics.