Life expectancy in the United States fell by one and a half years to 77.3 years in 2020, the lowest level since 2003, mainly due to Coronavirus disease The pandemic, the US health agency said on Wednesday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that this was the biggest one-year decline since World War II, when life expectancy fell by 2.9 years between 1942 and 1943, which was shorter than the February 2021 estimate Six months.
“In the past few decades, life expectancy has gradually increased every year,” CDC researcher Elizabeth Arias, who participated in the report, told Reuters. “The decline from 2019 to 2020 is so large that we are back to 2003 levels. It’s a bit like we lost ten years.”
The CDC said that COVID-19 accounted for nearly three-quarters of the decline, or 74%, and drug overdose was also a major cause.
CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released interim data last week showing that the number of deaths from drug overdose in the United States in 2020 has risen by nearly 30%.
The latest CDC report is based on temporary mortality data from January to December 2020.
According to the report, racial, gender and ethnic differences have worsened during this period. In 2020, the life expectancy of blacks fell by 2.9 years to 71.8 years, the lowest level since 2000. The life expectancy of Hispanic men fell by 3.7 years to 75.3 years, the largest decline.
In 2020, the life expectancy gap between men and women has also widened. Women’s life expectancy is now 80.2 years, which is 5.7 years longer than men’s—6 months longer than the 2019 expectation.
The data represents an early estimate based on death certificates received, processed, and encoded but not finalized by NCHS.
(Reporting by Dania Nadeem; supplementary report by Trisha Roy in Bangalore; editing by Caroline Humer and Steve Orlofsky)
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