American Life Expectancy Continues To Fall

The CDC has recently released a report showing American life expectancy has declined to 78.6 years overall; men can now expect to live 76.1 years, and women held steady at 81.1 years. This drop was fueled by the sharpest annual increase in suicides in a decade, the drop continued to rise being pushed on from powerful opioid overdoses, and factors such as influenza, pneumonia, and diabetes.

In sobering statistics more than 2.8 million people died within the USA in 2017, a figure that is nearly 70,000 more than the previous year, and the highest since the government started tracking over a century ago.

While heart disease and cancer still kill the most people, that is not the cause of death for most of the younger people dying which is largely due to the opioid crisis. Statistics may be declining in deaths from cancer and heart disease due to medical advances, but something else is alarmingly climbing: from 2006 to 2016 death rates from drug overdoses has increased 72% and suicides has increased 23%.

In a media statement Robert R. Redfield, M.D,. CDC Director says, “The latest CDC data show that the U.S. life expectancy has declined over the past few years. Tragically, this troubling trend is largely driven by deaths from drug overdose and suicide. Life expectancy gives us a snapshot of the Nation’s overall health and these sobering statistics are a wakeup call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable. CDC is committed to putting science into action to protect U.S. health, but we must all work together to reverse this trend and help ensure that all Americans live longer and healthier lives.”