U.S. life expectancy drops for second year
First two-year decline since 1962-63 partially spurred by opioid epidemic
Health researchers have some grim news for Americans: We are dying younger, and life expectancy is down for the second straight year — something not seen in more than half a century.
One culprit is the opioid epidemic, which cuts down young adults at alarming and increasing rates, the researchers said.
The numbers are “disturbing,” said Robert Anderson of the National Center for Health Statistics. The branch is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released two reports Thursday. One focused on all causes of death, and the other zeroed in on drug overdose deaths.
A baby born in the USA in 2016 could expect to live 78.6 years, a decrease of more than a month from 2015 and more than two months from 2014.
That’s the first two-year decline since 1962 and 1963 when spikes in flu deaths probably were to blame, Anderson said.
The declines are out of sync with a larger world in which lives are getting longer and healthier, public health experts said.
“The rest of the world is improving. The rest of the world is seeing large declines in mortality and large improvements in life expectancy,” said Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. “That’s true in rich countries and middle-income countries and generally true even in lower-income countries.”
The difference between the USA and most of the rest of the world “is very stark,” said Jonathan Skinner, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. Newborns in 29 countries, including Ja- pan, Australia and Spain, had life expectancies beyond 80 years in 2015, according to the World Health Organization. The average global life expectancy was
71.4 and rising, according to that agency’s most recent report.
What’s going wrong with U.S. health? The new statistics present a paradox: Overall death rates actually fell in 2016, and so did deaths from seven of the 10 biggest killers, including cancer and heart disease. But life expectancy fell, too — because death rates ticked up in people younger than 65.
A second CDC report makes it clear that drug overdoses drove the wave of premature deaths, killing 63,600 people in 2016. The death rate from overdoses tripled from 6.1 per 100,000 people in
1999 to 19.8 in 2016.
It spiked 21% from 2015 to 2016, the report says.
The overall decline in U.S. life expectancy cannot be called a trend, Anderson said: “I hope it’s just a two-year thing.” But, he said, the picture is unlikely to improve if the rise in drug deaths is not stopped.