U.S. Life Expectancy Rebounds, Still Shy of Pre-Pandemic Levels
Dec 07, 2023
Early data points to an uptick of over
a year in life expectancy after a precipitous pandemic-driven decline.
Average life expectancy
in the U.S. rebounded in 2022 by a little over a year following two straight
declines, fueled largely by a drop in mortality tied to COVID-19.
Overall life expectancy
at birth rose from 76.4 years in 2021 to 77.5 years in 2022, according to “near-final data” released Wednesday by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health
Statistics. The increase comes after the U.S. experienced its largest single-year drop in life expectancy in more
than seven decades in 2020, which was followed by another
decline in 2021 to trim a combined 2.4 years off the estimated length of an
average life in America if recent death rates were to hold steady.
Just as COVID-19
drove the bulk of those year-over-year declines – alongside
mortality due to causes like unintentional injuries, which includes drug
overdoses – the rise in life expectancy in 2022 was tied to a drop in COVID-19
mortality. Researchers said that drop accounted for more than 84% of the
positive contribution to the change in life expectancy in 2022, while declines
in deaths caused by heart disease, unintentional injuries, cancer and homicide
accounted for approximately 10%.
Separate CDC tracking data indicates
that COVID-19 accounted for a high of approximately 30% of U.S. deaths in early
January 2021, but that share had fallen to approximately 5% by late December
2022.
Still, last year’s
increase in life expectancy was not large enough to put the U.S. back at its
immediate pre-pandemic levels, instead placing it on par with life expectancy in
the early 2000s.
“The increase in life
expectancy would have been even greater if not for the offsetting effects of
increases in mortality” tied to causes such as influenza and pneumonia,
perinatal conditions and kidney disease, among others, researchers said.
By gender, average life
expectancy increased 1.3 years among men to 74.8 years in 2022, compared with a
0.9-year increase among women to 80.2 years. The gap in life expectancy between
women and men also narrowed in 2022 to 5.4 years compared with 5.8 years in
2021. That disparity reached its lowest level in 2010 at 4.8 years, but then
increased in both 2020 and 2021 to “levels not seen since 1996,” when the
difference was six years, according to the study.
Life expectancy also rose
across racial and ethnic groups included in the report in 2022, with the
largest increase occurring among American Indian and Alaska Native people at
2.3 years, from 65.6 years in 2021 to 67.9 years. That uptick – driven heavily
by a decrease in death from COVID-19, as well as declines in mortality from
chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, suicide, cancer and diabetes – followed a
massive loss of more than six years in estimated life expectancy from 2019 to
2021.
Hispanic individuals saw
the second-largest increase in life expectancy at 2.2 years, from 77.8 years in
2021 to 80 years in 2022, with a decline in COVID-19 mortality again heavily
driving the change.
Life expectancy among
Black people increased by 1.6 years from 71.2 in 2021 to 72.8 in 2022, according
to the report. It rose by one year among Asian people – from 83.5 in 2021 to
84.5 in 2022 – while whites saw a 0.8-year increase to 77.5 in 2022.
The life expectancy
figures come as a second CDC report released
Wednesday underscores a different mortality-related trend, breaking down
suicide data and showing that the nation’s provisional age-adjusted suicide
rate in 2022 hit 14.3 per 100,000 standard population in 2022 – up 1% from
2021’s final rate of 14.1 per 100,000 and nearly 6% from a rate of 13.5 per 100,000 in
2020. The rate for 2022 would be the highest since 1941, according to the
report.
Early data also indicates
the number of suicides increased for the second year in a row,
rising from 48,183 deaths in 2021 to 49,449 in 2022 – the highest number ever
recorded in the U.S. and a total that is likely to grow as more data is
tallied.
“The 2022 final number of
suicides is likely to be higher as additional death certificates with pending
causes of death may be determined to be suicides,” the report states.
Source: U.S. News