A 400% increase means deaths are five times as high as they were previously.)Ĭertain health problems are driving higher death rates. (First, a quick note about percentages: A 100% increase in deaths from an illness means the death rate doubled since the last time it was measured. Tragically, mortality rates in this age group are bringing down the national average. Midlife is the time when adults are typically the most productive, raising families and making up the majority of the workforce. The authors focused attention on midlife, defined as adults ages 25 to 64. So now, in this decade, without large-scale war causalities or a severe pandemic, without economic crisis or famine, why is US life expectancy decreasing? Diving into details on life expectancyĪ recent report in JAMA provides a comprehensive, detailed look at this phenomenon. The average American can expect to live 3.5 years less than the average Canadian.
The US is also the only developed country in the world whose average life expectancy stopped increasing after 2010. As an article in the Washington Post observes, this is the first time the US has seen such prolonged declines since 1915 to 1918, when Americans experienced both World War I and a flu pandemic. The US experienced three years in a row of declining life expectancy. And then in 2014, something worse happened: life expectancy began decreasing. Between 20, life expectancy in the US plateaued. Unfortunately, that's where the good news ends. The simple thought of adding almost 10 years, on average, to the lifespan of each individual in the country in that short amount of time is amazing and astounding, a true testament to our rapidly increasing understanding of health, medicine, and the environment. An amazing rise, a surprising fallīetween 19, the United States experienced an unprecedented increase in life expectancy, which rose from 69.9 years to 78.9 years. Breakthroughs in science, strong economies, and behaviors like eating a healthy diet, exercising, and avoiding tobacco typically raise average life expectancy. Wars, famine, and economic crises are expected to lower life expectancy. If you were to sum up the overall health of a nation in one single number, what would that be? At the top of the list, you would likely find average life expectancy - the total number of years, on average, that a person in a country can expect to live.
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