U.S. life expectancy drops again as more Americans dying from drug, alcohol use
Life expectancy in the U.S. has fallen for the second year in a row, thanks to a combination of drug and alcohol use and suicides, a report said this week.
The drop was particularly large among middle-age white Americans and those living in rural communities, experts said in a report in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.
The report, released Wednesday, complements one released in December from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that also found life expectancy was down for the second straight year.
“We are seeing an alarming increase in deaths from substance abuse and despair,” said Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, a co-author of the latest report. The idea of the American dream is increasingly out of reach as social mobility declines and fewer children face a better future than their parents, he said.
In 2016, life expectancy in the USA was 78.6 years, a decrease of 0.1 years from 2015, according to the report, which cites data from the World Bank. Data from 2017 has yet to be calculated.
“It may not sound like much, but the alarming story is not the amount of the decrease but that the increase has ended,” he said.
In 1960, the United States had the highest life expectancy in the world. It has lost ground to other industrialized nations ever since.
Life expectancy in the U.S. is now 1.5 years lower than a group of 35 nations known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, among others.
The report found that Americans have poorer health than people in other nations in many areas, including birth outcomes, injuries, homicides, adolescent pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Americans also engage in unhealthy or risky behaviors — such as high calorie intake, drug abuse and firearms ownership — live in cities designed for cars rather than pedestrians or cyclists, have weaker social welfare supports and lack universal health insurance, the report said.
“The consequences of these choices are dire: not only more deaths and illness, but also escalating health care costs, a sicker workforce, and a less competitive economy. Future generations may pay the greatest price,” the report concludes.
The drop in life expectancy is a result of more than opioid abuse, which was cited as a main cause in the CDC report last year, Woolf said. “It’s a larger issue, involving addiction to opioids but also fatal overdoses from other drugs,” he said. And it’s accompanied by a surge in deaths from alcohol and an increase in the suicide rate.
“We are seeing an alarming increase in deaths from substance abuse and despair.”
Steven Woolf Virginia Commonwealth University