US Life Expectancy Declines - Again

 

by Pa Rock

Old Fart

An old friend (and by that I mean someone with whom I worked closely four decades ago for a couple of years and had not seen or heard from since) passed away last week.  He crawled into bed one evening, relatively fit and healthy, and proceeded to die in his sleep.  My friend was three years younger than me.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alarming report this week, at least it was alarming to me, saying that life expectancy in the United States has dropped for the second year in a row. (Life expectancy is a prediction based on current death rates of how long a child born today can expect to live. It is an indicator of a nation or a specific area's overall health level - and I saw it referred to in one article as a sort of "check-engine" light.) 

Life expectancy in the US was almost at 78.8 years in 2019, and new figures released for 2021 show that it has dropped to 76.1 years.  That is the largest two-year drop in nearly a century.   The decline has been fueled by COVID deaths, an increase in drug overdose deaths (which may have been driven in part by COVID deaths and concerns over COVID), and an increase in deaths by unintended injuries.

Racially the steepest drop in life expectancy was among Native Americans who saw a two-year drop of an astounding 6.5 years.    Figures for just the most recent year ranked Native Americans first with a drop of 1.9 years in life expectancy,  White Americans second with a decrease of one year, Black Americans third with a .7 year decrease and Asian Americans placing the best with only a .1 year drop in life expectancy.  Asian Americans have the longest life expectancy of any racial group in this country at 83.5 years.

Hawaii, with a life expectancy of 80.7 years, would appear to enjoy our nation's best overall health, and Mississippi displays the nation's worst health outcomes with a life expectancy of just 71.9 years.  My state of Missouri has a life expectancy on 75.1 years, a figure that is very concerning to this tired old typist who will be 74.5-years-old in less than three weeks!

I think my check-engine light is on!