Life expectancy declines
Nation has worst results among wealthy countries
Life expectancy for U.S. adults ages 25-64 continues to drop, declining from a peak of 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 in 2017.
The engine that powers the world’s most potent economy is dying at a worrisome pace, a “distinctly American phenomenon” with no easily discernible cause or simple solution.
Those are some of the conclusions from a comprehensive new study conducted by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, showing that mortality rates for U.S. adults ages 2564 continue to increase, driving down the general population’s life expectancy for at least three consecutive years.
The report, “Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in the United States, 1959-2017,” was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study paints a bleak picture of a workforce plagued by drug overdoses, suicides and organ-system diseases while grappling with economic stresses.
“This looks like an excellent paper – just what we needed to help unravel the overall decline in life expectancy in the U.S.,” said Eileen Crimmins, an associate dean at the University of Southern California.
In a trend that cuts across racial and ethnic boundaries, the U.S. has the worst midlife mortality rate among 17 high-income countries despite leading the world in per-capita spending on health care.
And while life expectancy in other industrialized nations continues to inch up, it has been going in the opposite direction in America, decreasing from a peak of 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 in 2017, the last year covered by the report.
By comparison, according to the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, the average longevity in similar countries is 82.2 years. Japan’s is 84.1, France’s 82.4 and Canada’s 81.9.
Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the VCU Center on Society and Health and the study’s lead author, said the reasons for the decline go well beyond the lack of universal health care in the U.S. – in contrast with those other nations – although that’s a factor.
“It would be easier if we could blame this whole trend on one problem, like guns or obesity or the opioid epidemic, all of which distinguish the U.S. from the other countries,” Woolf told USA
TODAY. “But we found increases in death rates across 35 causes of death.”
They were most pronounced in the industrial Midwest, the 13 Appalachian states and upper New England, a fact Woolf attributed partly to the decline in manufacturing jobs and the opioid epidemic.
Other numbers mined by the study, based on data compiled by the U.S. Mortality Database and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
❚ Between 1999 and 2017, midlife mortality from drug overdoses spiked by 386.5%.
❚ In that same age group and time period, deaths from hypertensive diseases increased by 78.9%, and those linked to obesity by 114%.
❚ Suicides rose by 38%, and climbed 55.9% among those ages 55-64.