JUNE 2, 2023
A couple walks through a park at sunset in Kansas City, Missouri. U.S. life expectancy dropped for two consecutive years in 2020 and 2021, marking the first such trend since the early 1920s, according to a new government report. – Charlie Riedel, AP Images
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.
The findings offer a new perspective on U.S. life expectancy and shed light on how to reverse the trend, experts say.
‘Taking the historical perspective’
The U.S. began seeing dramatic increases in life expectancy in the early 20th century, mainly a result of public health advances such as vaccines and sanitation, Woolf said.
The new report shows how that growth continued into the ’50s, with U.S. life expectancy ranking 12th highest in the world. But that growth rate began declining in 1955, and by 1968, the U.S. had fallen to 29th.
The decline began much earlier than many researchers had thought, Woolf said.
“When asked when did this problem began, we cited the 1980s … because we haven’t gone back far enough in the historical data to see what happened before,” he said. “That there was a decline in the 1950s raises questions about what was going on then.”
The life expectancy growth rate rebounded in 1974, according to the study, then decelerated again in 1983. 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.
“Taking the historical perspective teaches us that things are not predetermined,” Engelman said. “Things change, and that means there’s a possibility for more improvement in the future.”
More countries are surpassing the US
The report also looked beyond the same small subset of peer countries – like the United Kingdom or Canada – that are typically included when studying life expectancy.
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.
“Countries that don’t necessarily have all the support systems and infrastructure and policies that exist in higher-income countries are still outperforming” the U.S., he said. “What are they doing in those countries that have enabled their people to live longer?”
Some US states are worse than others
Since the ’50s, life expectancy grew at a different pace throughout the country, according to the report.
Northeastern and Western states experienced the fastest growth, Woolf said, while south-central and Midwestern states saw the slowest growth.
“This cluster of states really played an outsized role in producing these poor rankings for the United States,” he said. “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.
“The things that influence health and longevity are operating on multiple levels,” Engelman said. “The story of our health goes far beyond thing that we can personally control.”
Courtesy/Source: This article originally appeared on USA TODAY
