For the first time in more than half a century, Americans’ life expectancy declined for the second straight year, a change driven by drug overdose deaths among younger people, officials said.
A baby born in 2016 could expect to live 78.6 years, down from 78.7 in 2015, the National Center for Health Statistics said in its annual mortality report released last week.
The change occurred not because older people are dying younger, but because of drug overdose deaths among people aged 25 to 54. And it occurred despite an overall decline in mortality.
The death rate for all Americans decreased by 0.6 percent in 2016, but it increased among younger adults. Adults aged 25-34, 35-44 and 45–54 had the highest rates of drug overdose deaths among the 63,600 Americans who died of overdoses that year.
Disparities were also seen across gender lines. Life expectancy for American men declined from 76.3 to 76.1 between 2015 and 2016, but stayed the same for women, 81.1.
While the changes are slight, they are troubling to public-health officials, who note that America is the only developed nation to experience a decline in life expectancy in recent years. Moreover, it’s the first time since 1963 that life expectancy has decreased in two consecutive years.
“Even though 1/10th of a year of decline in life expectancy doesn’t seem like a lot, it actually represents a lot of lives cut short,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch of the National Center for Health Statistics.