U.S. life expectancy increased last year, but by 2020 it could decline the largest amount since World War II, as Covid-19 becomes the nation’s third leading cause of death.
Data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that life expectancy rose to 78.8 years in 2019, an increase of one-tenth of the year, marking the second consecutive year of progress in the key measure of national well-being.
The main drivers were the lowest mortality rates from heart disease and cancer, the country did not. 1 and no. 2 causes of death, respectively, said Robert Anderson, head of the mortality statistics branch at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The mortality rate from drug overdoses increased after declining the previous year, while the mortality rate from suicide decreased for the first time since 2005.
Last year’s low gain will be erased by a sharp drop in longevity when the government releases the 2020 figures next year. Anderson said he conducted a simple simulation based on mortality figures through August and found that life expectancy had decreased by about 1½ years. Throughout the year, he expects life expectancy to drop from two to three years.
“We’ve added a lot of deaths since August, so I think a two- to three-year drop for 2020 isn’t out of the question,” Anderson said. He said his figures are rough estimates and the government needs comprehensive data to measure the exact impact of the pandemic on U.S. mortality.
A drop of this magnitude will mark the biggest drop in life expectancy since 1943, when World War II deaths pushed that metric by 2.9 years, Anderson said. It will continue to be a much smaller decline than in 1918, when the so-called Spanish flu dropped life expectancy by 11.8 years. This is partly because, unlike Covid-19, this flu was especially deadly among children, whose deaths disproportionately decrease life expectancy.
The newspaper reported deaths from Covid-19 in the US
Notes: for the 50 states and cruises of DC territories, USA. Last updated
Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering
Covid-19 is expected to be the third leading cause of death by 2020. As of Monday, it had killed more than 319,000 people in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Last year, heart disease killed nearly 659,000 people, cancer killed nearly 600,000 people, and accidental deaths, the third leading cause of death, were about 173,000. according to CDC data. More than 2.85 million people died in the United States last year, the highest figure ever recorded.
Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, said he estimates the pandemic will cause deaths to exceed births in more than half of U.S. counties by 2020 for the first time in U.S. history.
The overall U.S. fertility rate fell to its lowest level last year and is expected to decline further as weak economic and health concerns deter women from having children. “We have people dying and hospital rooms,” Professor Johnson said. “Who wants to have a baby?”
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Professor Johnson said that according to his estimates, rural parts of the US will be most affected by the phenomenon of deaths exceeding births. “Losing some people is so much more impactful when everyone knows everyone than in a big urban area,” he said.
The United States was making progress in reducing mortality rates before the pandemic arrived and investing land it lost during the middle of the last decade. Last year the mortality rate declined for non-Hispanic whites and blacks while remaining almost flat for Hispanics.
Of the top ten causes of death, rates fell in seven of them: heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory tract disease, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney disease, flu and pneumonia, and suicide. Rates remained almost flat for stroke and diabetes. Influenza and pneumonia were grouped into a single category.
The only exception was the rate of deaths from involuntary injury: drug deaths helped increase that rate by 2.7%.
The only age group that experienced a marked increase in mortality were people aged 35 to 44, with mortality rates rising by 2.3% in 2019. Anderson said he was likely motivated by deaths from drug overdose.
Write to Janet Adamy to [email protected]
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