US life expectancy falls to lowest in 25 years

US life expectancy has dropped to its lowest level in more than two decades with the average life expectancy for Americans shortened by over seven months last year.

Latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday showed the seven months decrease follows an already big decline of 1.8 years in 2020. As a result, the expected life span of someone born in the US is now 76.4 years, the shortest it has been in 25 years.

Both men and women saw a nearly identical drop in life expectancy with the number falling to 73.5 years and 79.3 years respectively.

Life expectancy numbers in the US are now the lowest they have been since 1996.

The data showed deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses, most notably synthetic opioids like fentanyl, were the primary drivers of the decline in US life expectancy.

"It's not a good year for the data, let's put it that way," says CDC statistician Kenneth Kochanek.

Kochanek and his colleagues had hoped the release of new vaccines might make for a healthier 2021, and didn't anticipate deaths from COVID-19 would top the prior year. But they were wrong. In fact, COVID-19 claimed nearly 417,000 lives last year, more than even the year before, accounting for about 60 percent of the decline in life expectancy.

Preliminary data from 2022 so far indicate deaths from COVID-19 are on the decline, but Kochanek says that doesn't mean life expectancy will rebound quickly in years to come, because COVID-19 was, by no means, the only contributor to the higher death toll in 2021.

Heart disease, the leading cause of Americans' deaths, along with top killers cancer, diabetes and kidney disease also proved more lethal in 2021.

ME