Weighing in on a long-simmering controversy, federal health officials Wednesday confirmed that U.S. Hispanics live longer, on average, than most other Americans.

The first official Hispanic life tables, published by the National Center for Health Statistics, show a Hispanic baby born in 2006 would live on average 80.6 years - 2.5 years longer than an Anglo child and 7.7 years longer than an African American.

The report supports the idea of the so-called Hispanic paradox - that Hispanics have lower death rates despite an overabundance of social and health disadvantages.

"It is consistent with what studies have shown going back to the '80s when this paradox was first noted," Elizabeth Arias, the lead researcher for the life tables, said in a telephone interview.

While national death rates long have pointed to an advantage among Hispanics, the idea has been controversial - especially in San Antonio, where experts have come down on both sides. Some say Hispanics don't live longer, and any evidence they do is clouded by inconsistencies in how ethnicity is identified on death certificates and in census surveys.

An often-cited 2006 paper laying out those inconsistencies was co-written by Benjamin Bradshaw, a professor at the San Antonio branch of the University of Texas School of Public Health. His paper concluded: "There is no 'Hispanic paradox.'"

Arias said she spent several years correcting for those problems. She compared how people described their own ethnicity on census surveys with how others - often funeral directors - identified them at death. She found about 5 percent fewer people identified as Hispanics on death certificates.

She also adjusted the new tables for another problem - one of people fudging their ages, particularly in later life.

Former Texas State Demographer Karl Eschbach, who recently left San Antonio, has written in support of the Hispanic paradox, as well as problems with the data. He believes they've been corrected in the new report.

"I would count myself among the convinced on that point," said Eschbach, now a professor at the UT Medical Branch in Galveston.

But Dr. Fernando Guerra, director of the Metropolitan Health District, is skeptical. His department analyzes local death records each year and finds that more Hispanics die prematurely - before age 65 - of common diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

"The so-called Hispanic paradox that they're making reference to is really dispelled by some of our own data," Guerra said. "The Hispanic population is dying at a younger age consistently."

Arias noted that Hispanics are a diverse group, and that other research has shown new immigrants tend to be stronger and healthier, and may live longer than those who have been here for a generation or two and picked up unhealthy lifestyles.

As for why Hispanics might have a long-life advantage, theories include strong family ties, a healthier diet, more physically demanding jobs and low smoking rates - also seen in other long-lived populations around the world.

Finding out exactly which Hispanics are living longer and why might ultimately require producing separate life tables for U.S. and foreign-born Hispanics, or even by country of origin - separating Cuban Americans, say, from Mexican Americans, Arias said. She said official tables for Asian Americans and American Indians have yet to be produced.

"This advantage may be real and correlated with culture," Arias said. "It may be something we can learn from."

Dr. David Espino, a gerontologist and professor of family medicine at the UT Health Science Center, also has written about the Hispanic paradox and believes it exists. He isn't convinced, however, those extra years are necessarily good ones.

"There's a trade-off for that," Espino said. "They live longer, but they have more years of disability. I get an older patient who comes in and says, 'I don't want to live that long.' And again, the point is, it's not your choice. You have to do what you need to do to remain healthy. And that doesn't always connect in the older Hispanic community."