Life expectancy in the US increased slightly in 2022, official data show, but remains at the lowest level in almost two decades.
Figures from the CDC show that someone born today is now expected to live 77 years and two and a half months, just over a year more than in 2021, when the Covid pandemic was still raging.
It is the first time in two years that life expectancy has risen, but the measure remains at its lowest level since 2003 – lagging behind 2019 levels, before Covid struck, when it was 78 years and nine months.
Researchers warned today that the drops were a ‘flashing red light’ highlighting the declining health of the country’s population – amid rising obesity rates.
Life expectancy in the US lags behind that of its European counterparts, including Germany – where people born today can expect to live an average of 81 years and eight months, or five years longer than their American counterparts.
The chart above shows US life expectancy by year from 1980 to 2022. There has been a slight increase in the most recent year data is available
Although the US is recovering from a sharp rise in Covid deaths, the country still ranks far below other developed countries. Even taking into account the recent increase in life expectancy, countries like Japan, France and Sweden rank much higher
It also lags behind many other European countries, including Britain, Austria, France and Switzerland.
By comparison, in Britain, men can expect to live four years longer than their American counterparts, while women can expect to live three years longer.
Life expectancy in the US is also almost five years shorter than in neighboring Canada, where people born today are currently expected to live 81 years and four months.
Dr. Steven Woolf, a public health expert at Virginia Commonwealth University, said CNN“Simply put, the fact that life expectancy was lower in 2022 than in 2019 means that despite the recovery, Americans are still dying at a higher rate than before the pandemic.
“We’re barely out of the woods.”
On the rise in child deaths, he added: “This is a red light about the poor health status of Americans and how it is now putting our children at risk.
“This trend… is nevertheless alarming because it means that our children, our most beloved population, will be less likely to reach adulthood.”
The CDC report calculated life expectancy at birth based on the nearly 3.3 million deaths recorded in 2022 – 184,300 fewer than in 2021.
They also analyzed death rates by age group to reveal trends and whether death rates were increasing among certain groups.
The report did not give a reason for the increase in life expectancy, although it did indicate falling death rates from Covid-19 as more people have immunity to the virus.
Data showed that Covid deaths fell by 57 percent between 2021 and 2022, with Covid falling from the third to fourth biggest killer in the US over the same period.
Heart disease and cancer remained the two leading causes of death in the United States.
Unintentional injuries – such as car accidents – rose from fourth to the third leading cause of death, and kidney disease rose from tenth to ninth.
Life expectancy in the US had been increasing for decades – from an estimated 50 years in 1900 to almost 77 years at the turn of the century.
But after Covid hit, life expectancy saw the biggest drop since World War II: between 2019 and 2020, life expectancy fell by a year and six months.
The record was set in 2014, when the average American lived 78 years and 10 months after birth.
The above shows life expectancy at birth in the US for the last two years of data available
The CDC said the increase in life expectancy was partly driven by a decline in deaths from Covid
The CDC report also looked at death rates across all age groups, which decreased among older adults but increased among infants and young children.
Infant mortality data showed that the mortality rate in 2022 was 560.4 deaths per 100,000 live births, an increase of 3.1 percent from the previous year.
The rate also rose by 12 percent among one- to four-year-olds, from 25 to 28 deaths per 100,000 people, and by seven percent among young people aged five to 14, from 14.3 to 15.3 years.
The report did not suggest what had caused the shift, although Dr Woolf has previously suggested it was linked to the increase in drug overdoses and car accidents in the child age group. For babies, there has been growing concern for years about the decline of American maternity care.
Dr. Woolf said: ‘Importantly, these are the same causes of death that are claiming the lives of young adults in their 20s.
‘What this means is that the causes of death that have claimed the lives of young adults have now reached the younger age groups and claimed the lives of teenagers.’