According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday, life expectancy in the United States increased in 2022, after two years of significant decline due largely to the COVID-19 pandemic. CDC data shows that the median life expectancy at birth – the expected lifespan of a baby born in a given year – is 77.5 years in 2022, up 1.1 years from 2021.
However, this is still lower than the average life expectancy in the United States in 2019: 4,444, or 78.8 years. “We saw this decline during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we’re coming back,” said Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center for Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. with the numbers we saw in 2019.”
Other rich countries also saw a decline in 2020, but their life expectancy started to rise again in 2021, as vaccines and better treatments for Covid were introduced. In the United States, life expectancy continues to decline in 2021.
“Seeing the current increase in 2022 is amazing we finally stopped the daily deaths,” said Ryan Masters, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It’s even worse in the United States.” “However, this comes a year later than what other comparable countries have experienced, and it only scratches the surface of improving mortality conditions for Americans.
Before the pandemic, life expectancy in the United States had largely stagnated, while in other countries it continued to increase. “The United States has done quite poorly compared to other countries,” Woolf said. “The gap between the United States and other countries today is huge.
The decline in Covid Deaths Contributes to Increase in Life Expectancy
According to the CDC report, the increase in life expectancy in 2022 was mainly due to a sharp decrease in COVID-19 deaths that year. Smaller declines in death rates from other causes, including cancer, heart disease, homicide, and unintentional injuries, also contributed to the increase.
CDC researchers say life expectancy would increase more if it weren’t for the increase in deaths from pneumonia and flu, malnutrition, kidney disease, birth defects, and perinatal deaths. Woolf said a slight increase in deaths from influenza and pneumonia in 2022, which had the biggest impact on life expectancy reduction, was not a cause for concern.
Rather, the figures illustrate a rebound effect: 4,444 deaths from non-Covid viruses were significantly reduced by mask-wearing and physical distancing in the early stages of the pandemic. “Now levels are really returning to normal,” he said. Although the category of unintentional injuries – which has decreased – includes drug overdose deaths, Woolf notes that this particular number of deaths has not decreased as the opioid epidemic rages.
. Instead, he said it was a decline in car crashes, which increased nearly 7% in 2020, that caused the decline.
Increase in Malnutrition Rates Across the Nation
The CDC report also highlights what experts say is an alarming increase in deaths from malnutrition in 2022.
Researchers estimate that these deaths account for 13% of the causes. reduces overall lifespan. A study published earlier this month in the journal BMJ Medicine found that deaths from malnutrition in the United States increased by nearly 2.5-fold from 1999 to 2020.
Dr. Deborah Kado, professor of geriatric medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, Division of Primary Care and Population Health, said dementia and poverty are both on the rise, especially in older adults in the United States. “Loss of knowledge as well as loss of income can make malnutrition worse,” she said.
Persistent Racial Disparities Persist
Perinatal mortality, including stillbirths after the 28th week of pregnancy and newborns in the first week of life, has generally increased and will contribute to a 15% decrease in life expectancy by 2022. Compared with the last year. Perinatal mortality rates are highest among black Americans, highlighting profound racial health disparities. This contributes to nearly 60% of the negative impact on life expectancy among black Americans, at least double the rate of any other race or ethnicity.
While American Indians and Alaska Natives experienced the largest increase in life expectancy from 2021 to 2022, they still had the shortest life expectancy, with men living the longest at 65.6 years and women living the longest, at 67.9 years. It was nearly 20 years shorter than that. Expectations. Accidental injuries have been the single biggest factor preventing continued increases in life expectancy for American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. Despite the improvements, Masters warned that the U.S. still has a long way to go to improve public health, and the delays began long before the pandemic.
“The pandemic is not as shocking in terms of health as people want to portray,” he said. “In the 40 years before the pandemic, the United States had quite poor health and mortality outcomes.”