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U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further
News Brief: The pandemic continues to take a toll, but there are surprising nuances to the latest data
Life expectancy in the United States fell from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.99 years in 2020. That much we already knew. New data released today finds it fell further in 2021, to 76.60 years. That’s a net loss of 2.26 years in 2 years — the biggest drop since WWII.
On average, 19 other high-income countries saw a decline of 0.57 years over the same period, with a drop in 2020 but an uptick in 2021.
“While other high-income countries saw their life expectancy increase in 2021, recovering about half of their losses, U.S. life expectancy continued to fall,” said study team member Steven Woolf, MD, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “This speaks volumes about the life consequences of how the U.S. handled the pandemic, and in a country where the U.S. Constitution and 10th Amendment grant public health authority to the states, I believe the U.S. catastrophe speaks volumes about the policies and behaviors of U.S. governors — at least some of them. A highly effective vaccine was available in 2021 that made COVID-19 deaths almost completely preventable.”
