US Life Expectancy Problem is ‘Bigger Than We Ever Thought,’ Report Finds - USA Today

The country’s life expectancy problem gained renewed attention in recent years during the COVID-19 pandemic after seeing the largest drop since World War II.

[As U.S. life expectancy continues to plummet, a new report found the country has been at a life expectancy disadvantage since the 1950s, and it has only gotten worse since then.

The study, published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, also shows more than 50 countries have surpassed the U.S. in life expectancy since the 1930s, and a handful of states may be partly responsible.

“The scale of the problem is bigger than we ever thought … older than we thought, (and) the number of countries outperforming the United States is much larger than we thought,” said study author Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and [Health] at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

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Provisional data from 2021 shows U.S. life expectancy has dropped to 76.1 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the lowest it has been since 1996.

The study relied on estimates from the U.N. Population Division and the U.S. Mortality Database, Woolf said, which could skew exact rankings and year-over-year changes.

But the general takeaway remains the same, said Michal Engelman, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The timeline shows how life expectancy may be heavily influenced by systemic factors that are larger than individual health choices.

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By expanding the pool to include countries with populations over 500,000, the report found 56 countries had surpassed the U.S. in life expectancy since 1950 and included countries with smaller economies, lower populations and different government systems.

Middle-income countries made enough gains in life expectancy to catch up and then surpass the U.S. during times when the country’s acceleration slowed, Woolf said. By 2019, the U.S. ranked 40th among populous countries – lower than Lebanon and Albania.

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Northeastern and Western states experienced the fastest growth, Woolf said, while south-central and Midwestern states saw the slowest growth.

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“States doing very well like Hawaii, New York and other high performers are ranked among some the same life expectancy as some of the healthiest countries in the world.”

The findings support previous research showing how policy decisions affect health outcomes and, ultimately, life expectancy.

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