According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans’ average life expectancy fell by more than seven months in 2013.
This decrease comes after a huge decline in the number of years that were born in 2020, which was 1.8 years. The average life expectancy of a person born in the U.S. now stands at 76.4 years, which is the lowest it’s been in almost two decades.
Two reports released by the CDC Thursday show that deaths due to COVID-19 overdoses and drug overdoses, primarily synthetic opioids such as fentanyl were the main drivers of the decline in life expectancy.
Kenneth Kochanek, a CDC statistician, says that “it’s not a great year for data.
It is rare that you see such dramatic changes in life from year to year. However, the pandemic claimed almost 417,000 lives last year. This made COVID-19 the third most fatal cause of death for the second year.
Kochanek and his coworkers had hoped that the release of new vaccines would make 2021 a better year, but they didn’t expect COVID-19 deaths to surpass the previous year. They were wrong. COVID-19 was responsible for 60% of the declines in life expectancy.
Preliminary data for 2022 shows that COVID-19 deaths are declining, but Kochanek said that this doesn’t mean that life expectancy will increase quickly in the years ahead, as COVID-19 wasn’t the only factor in the higher death rate in 2021.
In 2021, heart disease was the most fatal cause of death in America.
Possibly because of the coronavirus, which was particularly severe among the elderly, there were fewer deaths from pneumonia, flu, and Alzheimer’s.
These new numbers are also indicative of the severe mental health crisis that has been running parallel to the pandemic. Deaths due to drug overdoses topped 106,000 in 2013. This is another significant factor in reducing life expectancy according to the second CDC analysis, released Thursday.
The number of deaths from suicide or liver disease (cirrhosis) caused by alcohol has also increased, reducing the average American’s life expectancy.
Kochanek states that the majority of deaths occur to younger people and that deaths to these people have a greater impact on the overall life expectancy than those to the elderly.
Both men and women experienced a similar decrease in life expectancy last ye, but women live on average until they are over 79, which is six years more than the men.
According to the CDC, death rates for certain racial or ethnic groups decreased last year, particularly among Hispanics and Black men. The death rates for all other groups increased, but it was more noticeable among white women and men, as well American Indian and Alaska Native women.
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