Life expectancy has been dropping for longer than previously thought.
We know that life expectancy has been on the decline for a while now, but as it turns out, this trend goes back a lot further than we may even realize. According to a recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health, the U.S. has had a steady “life expectancy disadvantage” since 1950 — three full decades before scientists previously thought — and it has only gotten worse with time.
“The scale of the problem is bigger than we ever thought,” the study’s author, Dr. Steven Woolf, told USA Today. He also added that the “number of countries outperforming the United States is much larger” than previous estimates.
Though the U.S. ranked 12th in life expectancy during the early 20th century, it slipped to 46th place in 2020 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. More on that below, plus which states are faring better than others.
What is the U.S. life expectancy rate?
According to the research platform MacroTrends, the current life expectancy in the U.S. is 79.11, which marks a 0.08 percent difference from 2022. While that may seem like a long time to live, the new report shows that America’s increases in life expectancy has actually been slowing since the 1950s — not the 1980s, as previously thought. (The increases dropped from 0.21 years per year from 1950 to 1954, to 0.1 years per year from 1955 to 1973.) Even though life expectancy bounced back some between 1974 and 1982, the increases fell once again from 0.15 years annually from 1983 to 2009, to 0.06 years from 2010 to 2019, putting the U.S. in 40th place behind other countries.
There were also some variations within the U.S. itself: While growth rates were generally highest in the Northwest and West, they tended to be lowest in South central states and the Midwest. For instance, life expectancy in Hawaii, which was 80.7 years as of 2020, is on par with those of people living in some of the healthiest countries in the world, like Finland. But that’s also much longer than other fellow Americans — people in Mississippi live to be 71.9 years on average, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
While more research is needed to understand these gaps, Woolf believes it can have something to do with the collapse of certain vital sectors like manufacturing, which hit some parts of the country particularly hard, economically. (Since historical data was lacking prior to the 1980s, these findings are based on 2022 estimates from the United Nations, the Human Mortality Database and U.S. Mortality Database.)
How does U.S. life expectancy compare to other countries?
For these types of measures, the U.S. has been typically compared with a limited subset of countries that are considered peers, such as the U.K. and Canada. But what’s unique about this study is that it expanded the pool to include 56 additional countries which not only performed better than the U.S., but also spanned the globe. For instance, Albania’s life expectancy grew from 73.5 years in 2000 to 78 years in 2019, according to the World Health Organization. To put that into perspective, data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that the average American life expectancy increased from 76.9 years to 78.8 years during that same timeframe.
As Woolf points out to USA Today, not all of the countries that are outperforming higher-income locales like the U.S. necessarily have the same support systems, infrastructure, and policies in place. Woolf said this has left some unanswered questions around what these other countries are doing to help their populations live longer.
“A prudent first step would be to examine policies that have enabled other countries to consistently outperform the United States for decades,” Woolf says in the study.
Is Covid to blame?
The short answer is: not entirely. It’s true that the coronavirus pandemic widened the life-expectancy gap — after all, the U.S. had far more deaths then other wealthy nations. (At one point, the country’s death rate was 63 percent higher than similar countries.) During the peak of the pandemic, the U.S. had an average life expectancy of 77.4 years, compared with 85.2 years in Hong Kong, which was the highest-performing country in terms of life expectancy.
But ultimately, Woolf said Covid was “simply phase six of something that has been going on since the 1950s,” and that a plateau in the 2010s led to a “dramatically” wider gap for the country as a whole.
“The pandemic was a horrific loss of life, but it really reflects pre-existing, systemic problems in our country that have been compromising the health of Americans for decades,” Woolf said.
What’s holding the U.S. back on life expectancy?
The study cites a number of factors that put the U.S. behind other countries, ranging from our health system to education policies and social values that all ultimately contribute to a poorer quality of life. “The U.S. health disadvantage continues to claim lives in real time,” the study states. “The crisis has broad implications, affecting not only mortality but also morbidity, with ripple effects on health care costs, workforce productivity, and the economy.”
Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. According to a report from the National Research Council Institute of Medicine, a team set out to identify why exactly the U.S. was falling behind other countries on life expectancy by focusing on five key areas: health care, health behaviors, social and economic factors, environment, and public policy. They ended up finding “dramatic differences,” in every single one of those categories, between America and the rest of the world. This includes everything from the lack of universal health care and higher rates in child poverty, to more guns and drugs in America.
The U.S. could see even more dramatic shifts in life expectancy rates as states continue to exert their authority on hot-button issues like abortion and gun control. “Health outcomes at the state level are likely going to diverge more, given the direction we’re taking,” says Woolf.
