Life expectancy in the United States in 2020 saw the largest decline since World War II | US news

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US public health officials said, on Wednesday, that life expectancy in the United States fell a year and a half in 2020, the largest one-year decline since World War II. The decline for both black Americans and Hispanic Americans was the worst: three years.

The decline identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is primarily due to the pandemic, which health officials have said is responsible for nearly 74% of the total decline in life expectancy. More than 3.3 million Americans died last year, far more than in any other year in US history, with Covid responsible for about 11% of those deaths.

The findings come as officials across the country weigh the possibility of bringing back some of the tougher efforts to curb the virus, including mask-wearing and vaccine work requirements. Los Angeles County recently redirected the indoor mask.

Black life expectancy hasn’t fallen much in a single year since the mid-1930s, during the Great Depression. Health officials haven’t tracked life expectancy for Hispanics for nearly a long time, but the drop in 2020 was the largest one-year decline on record.

Mark Hayward, a University of Texas sociology professor who studies changes in US mortality, said the sudden drop was “essentially catastrophic.”

Non-Covid killers played a role. Drug overdoses have reduced life expectancy, especially for white people. The rise in homicides was a small but significant reason for the decline of black Americans, said Elizabeth Arias, the report’s lead author.

Experts said other problems affected blacks and Latinos, including lack of access to quality health care, more crowded living conditions and a larger proportion of the population in low-paying jobs that required them to keep working when the pandemic was at its worst. .

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a child born in a given year is expected to live. It is an important statistical snapshot of a country’s health that can be affected by persistent trends such as obesity as well as more temporary threats such as epidemics or wars that may not put these newborns at risk in their lifetime.

For decades, life expectancy in the United States has been on the rise. But that trend stalled in 2015, for several years, before hitting 78 years and 10 months in 2019. Last year, the CDC said, it dropped to about 77 years and four months.

CDC data shows that more than 80% of Covid deaths last year were people 65 and older.

This has in fact reduced the toll from the pandemic on life expectancy at birth, which is more affected by the death of younger adults and children than the death of older adults.

That’s why last year’s decline was half that of the three years between 1942 and 1943, when young soldiers were dying in the war. And that was just a small part of the decline between 1917 and 1918, when the first war and the Spanish flu epidemic devastated the younger generations.

Life expectancy bounced back after these declines, and experts believe it will this time, too. But some said it could take years.

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