According to a government report being issued on Wednesday, the U.S. life expectancy declined for the second year in a row in 2021, dropping by almost a year from 2020.
According to estimates, the COVID-19 epidemic has reduced Americans’ average life expectancy by close to three years in the first two years. The most recent comparable decline took place at the height of World War II, in the early 1940s.
About half of the drop in 2021, a year when immunizations became widely accessible but new coronavirus variations produced waves of hospitalizations and fatalities, was attributed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials to COVID-19. Long-standing issues like drug overdoses, heart disease, suicide, and chronic liver disease are other factors in the decline.
This is a bad situation. It was terrible before, and it’s become worse, according to demographer Samuel Preston of the University of Pennsylvania.
According to the death rates of the period, life expectancy is an estimate of the typical number of years a baby born in a certain year might expect to live. According to Robert Hummer, a researcher at the University of North Carolina who studies population health patterns, it is “the most basic indication of population health in this country.”
Long-term increases in the U.S. life expectancy stopped before the pandemic.
In 2019, it was 78 years and 10 months old. It decreased to 77 years in 2020. It decreased to almost 76 years, 1 month last year.
That low point was last reached in 1996.
For some racial groups, the pandemic’s declines were worse, and some gaps grew wider. For instance, since the epidemic started, the average life expectancy for American Indian and Alaska Native people has decreased by more than 6 1/2 years, and it now stands at 65 years. Asian Americans now have a life expectancy of 83 1/2, down about two years during the same time period.
The lack of access to high-quality healthcare, lower vaccination rates, and a higher proportion of people working in lower-paying occupations that compelled them to continue working when the pandemic was at its worst are just a few of the numerous potential causes for such inequalities, according to experts.
Based on tentative data, the new report was created. Estimates of life expectancy are subject to revision when new information and research become available. For instance, the CDC previously estimated a 1 year, 6 month drop in life expectancy in 2020. However, it turned out to be roughly 1 year and 10 months after additional death reports and analyses were received.
However, according to CDC officials, it’s likely that the decreases in 2020 and 2021 will mark the country’s first two consecutive years of decreased life expectancy since the early 1960s.
—In the United States, women’s life expectancy decreased by roughly 10 months, from little more than 79 in 2021 to slightly less than 80 in 2020. Men’s life expectancy decreased by a whole year, from roughly 74 to 73.
The primary cause of the reduction was COVID-19 deaths. Deaths from unintentional accidents, largely from drug overdoses, which claimed the lives of a record-breaking 107,000 Americans last year, were the second largest contributor.
White people’s life expectancy decreased by one year, to around 76 years, 5 months, representing the second-largest dip among racial and ethnic groupings. The third-largest loss was experienced by Black people, who saw their age drop by more than eight months to 70 years and 10 months.
—In 2020, four years from now, the life expectancy of Hispanic Americans had significantly decreased. But their life expectancy fell to roughly 77 years and 7 months in 2021, down about two months. Preston believes that Hispanics’ high vaccination rates contributed.
Gains in the fight against suicide, according to the research, appear to be reversing.
From the early 2000s through 2018, there was an increase in suicides in the United States. However, they decreased slightly in 2019 and then significantly in 2020, the pandemic’s first year. Experts have questioned whether that might have been connected to a phenomena where people gather together and help one another during the early stages of wars and major national disasters.
Although it didn’t go into depth, the new analysis claimed that suicide was a factor in the reduction in life expectancy in 2021. Provisional figures from a public CDC database show that there were around 2,000 more suicides in the United States last year, bringing the total to 48,000. The U.S. suicide rate increased as well, from 13.5 per 100,000 to 14.1 per 100,000, returning it to a level similar to that of 2018.
