Life expectancy in U.S. keeps losing ground

What a downer. The average life expectancy in the United States is continuing to decline. At least that’s the word from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recently published three reports focusing on how Americans are not living longer.

That’s in contrast to the rest of the world, where life expectancy is increasing.

Yet the U.S. is one of the more advanced nations on the planet, with plenty of food, shelter and other amenities that should result in a high quality of life. What’s to blame? We have an opioid epidemic and increased rates of suicide. There’s also gun violence — not necessarily mass shootings that garner headlines, but the incremental deaths. Deaths because of lifestyle choices — heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, cirrhosis of the liver — also are a problem, although not as much as drug overdoses and suicide.

The three-year drop in life expectancy hasn’t happened in 100 years, back in 1915-18. Then, the U.S. was participating in a world war and battling a flu pandemic. Such is not the case today.

But drug overdoses claimed 70,237 lives in 2017 and suicides 47,000. Both numbers rose between 2016 and 2017. Americans are dying of preventable causes, in other words. The current life expectancy is 78.6 years, a decrease of 0.3 years from 2015’s 78.8.

The problem is not people growing older and dying — after all, baby boomers are up there in age. No, it’s people between 24 and 44 dying before their time. Just as the years when infants and young children died too early, lowering life expectancy as a whole, the deaths of people in the prime of life is having an impact.

In 2017, some 2.8 million people died in the U.S., about 69,255 more than in 2016.

For the U.S. to turn these depressing statistics around, the nation must work to control the drug epidemic, seeking to avoid overdose deaths until people can leave addiction behind. That means emphasis on prevention and treatment, and the guts to expand innovative programs, such as starting more needle exchanges and making drugs to reverse heroin overdoses more widely available. We do not have to accept drug overdose deaths.

Nor do we have to believe that we cannot prevent suicides. Particularly troubling is the prevalence of suicide in rural areas of the U.S.; in urban areas, the rate of suicide deaths is 11.1 per 100,000 people, while in rural areas, it is 20 per 100,000. Scientists say that’s because in rural areas, people have more access to guns. It’s simply easier to kill yourself. One strategy is to emphasize locking and storing guns away, so that in a moment of despair, it is difficult to take a permanent step.

More broadly, we have become a nation disconnected, talking to each other via social media but not knowing our neighbor’s name. Lonely people turn to drugs; they also tend to become despairing, and it is in the darkness of the spirit that people lose hope and attempt to end their lives. Building connections again — remember the days of widespread bowling leagues or bridge clubs? — is something both society and individuals must tackle.

Then, we must face the truth — a nation that drinks gallons of soda in a week, eats fast food nightly and won’t get out of the car to walk into the bank — that’s a nation where people are unhealthy in body and spirit. Community efforts to increase healthy eating and exercise among all citizens could reduce chronic diseases. Imagine neighborhood walking clubs or cooking classes. That could help build relationships, too, creating bonds that would stave off loneliness before it starts.

For a country that prides itself on being the “best” in the world, this is a dismal report. But these problems are challenging, not intractable.

Just as the U.S. improved public health — and increased life expectancy — with clean water, modern sewers and near-universal vaccinations, we can help our citizens support each other so that when death comes, it will be the natural end to a long, productive life. We deserve no less.