According to new data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a baby born in 2021 could live to be 76.4 years old.
According to two new studies released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans born in 2021 may live to an average age of 76.4, the shortest life expectancy in nearly three decades.
According to NPR, life expectancy dropped by seven months last year and will drop by 1.8 years by 2020.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the 2020 decline will be the largest since World War II.
According to The Washington Post, it’s a “dismal benchmark for a reliable measure of health that should rise steadily in an affluent, developed nation.”
According to NPR, the large drops result from COVID-19 deaths and drug overdoses, specifically synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
According to The Wall Street Journal, COVID is now the third leading cause of death, trailing only heart disease and cancer.
NPR noted that seeing a significant change from year to year is unusual, citing research that 417,000 people died from COVID in 2021, which is more than the year the disease became a pandemic.
According to NPR, CDC statistician Kenneth Kochanek and his colleagues claimed that COVID-19 was responsible for a 60% drop in life expectancy despite the distribution of vaccines. (Preliminary data indicate that COVID deaths will decrease in 2022.)
Nonetheless, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease were all deadlier than usual in 2021, according to NPR.
The excellent news: Alzheimer’s, flu, and pneumonia deaths have decreased, according to NPR, and death rates for Hispanic and Black men have fallen.
“The majority of those deaths are to younger people, and deaths to younger people have a greater impact on overall life expectancy than deaths to the elderly,” Kochanek told NPR.
According to The Washington Post, the findings continue an alarming trend in the United States, where a child born in 2019 could expect to live to 78.5, while a Japanese child born that year had a life expectancy of 84.5, Belgians lived to 81.4, and Swedes lived to 82.4.
