Written by AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe
NEW YORK (AP) The life expectancy in the United States increased last year, and early evidence indicates that this year’s improvement may be far less significant.
Death rates fell last year for almost all leading causes, notably COVID-19, heart disease and drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionreportreleased Thursday. The predicted lifetime of Americans was increased by over a year as a result.
It’s part of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to experts. However, life expectancy has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, and the recovery seems to be waning.
Continuing but gradual progress is what you’re seeing, according to Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a researcher at the University of Minnesota who focuses on death rates. In a way, we are returning to a normal that is worse than it was prior to the pandemic.
Nearly 3.1 million Americans lost their lives last year, which is roughly 189,000 fewer than the previous year. Death rates declined across all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men and women.
Provisional data for the first 10 months of 2024 suggests the country is on track to see even fewer deaths this year, perhaps about 13,000 fewer. However, as more death certificates are received, that gap should close, according to Robert Anderson of the CDC.
Life expectancy will therefore definitely increase in 2024, but not significantly, according to Anderson, who is in charge of death tracking at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Given the death rates in a given year, life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in that year might expect to live. It is a basic indicator of the health of a population.
For decades, U.S. life expectancy rose at least a little bit almost every year, thanks to medical advances and public health measures. It peaked in 2014, at nearly 79 years, and then was relatively flat for several years. Then it plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to just under 76 1/2 years in 2021.
It rebounded to 77 1/2 years in 2022 and, according to the new report, to nearly 78 1/2 last year.
Life expectancy for U.S. women continues to be well above that of men a little over 81 for women, compared with a little under 76 for men.
In the last five years, more than 1.2 million U.S. deaths have beenattributedto COVID-19. But most of them occurred in 2020 and 2021, before vaccination- and infection-induced immunity became widespread.
The coronavirus was once the nation s third leading cause of death. Last year it was the underlying cause in nearly 50,000 deaths, making it the nation s No. 10 killer.
Data for 2024 is still coming in, but about 30,000 coronavirus deaths have been reported so far. At that rate, suicide may surpass COVID-19 this year, Anderson said.
Heart disease remains the nation s leading cause of death. Some underappreciated good news is the heart disease death rate dropped by about 3% in 2023. That s a much smaller drop than the 73% decline in the COVID-19 death rate, but heart disease affects more people so even small changes can be more impactful, Anderson said.
There s also good news about overdose deaths, which fell to 105,000 in 2023 among U.S. residents, according toa second reportreleased by CDC on Thursday.
The causes of the overdose decline are still being studied but there is reason to be hopeful such deaths will drop more in the future, experts say. Some pointed tosurvey resultsthis week that showed teens drug use isn t rising.
The earlier you start taking a drug, the greater the risk that you could continue using it and the greater the risk that you will become addicted to it and have untoward consequences, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the survey study. If you can reduce the pipeline (of new drug users) … you can prevent overdoses.
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