Future bleak for nation’s workforce

Study finds distinct, widespread drop in life expectancy

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 by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University showing that mortality rates for U.S. adults ages 25-64 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.

In a trend that cuts across racial and ethnic boundaries, the United States 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 those other industrialized nations inches up, it is 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

“The prescription for the country is we’ve got to help these people. And if we don’t, we’re literally going to pay with our lives.” Lead author Steven Woolf

states and upper New England, which Woolf attributed partly to the decline in manufacturing jobs and the opioid epidemic.

Some of the numbers mined by the study, based on data compiled by the U.S. Mortality Database and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are staggering:

❚ 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.

Those are a lot of lives snuffed out in prime years, a long-range threat to an economy that ranks No. 1 globally in gross domestic product.

Even if Americans were to reverse the trend, one estimate says that at its rate of longevity growth from the past several years it would take the U.S. more than 100 years to catch up to the average life expectancy other wealthy countries reached by 2016.

“We’re making a huge mistake if we don’t step back and look at the root causes,” Woolf said. “The prescription for the country is we’ve got to help these people. And if we don’t, we’re literally going to pay with our lives.”