US Life Expectancy Falls AGAIN, Worst Record in Over 50 Years
Life expectancy in the United States has dropped again following last year’s decline, which marked the first downturn in more than two decades.
On average, Americans can now expect to live 78.6 years, a statistically significant drop of 0.1 year, according to a report on 2016 data published Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics. Women can now expect to live a full five years longer than men: 81.1 years vs. 76.1 years . . .
“I still don’t think you can call it a trend, because you really need more than two data points to call something a trend,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But it’s certainly concerning to see this two years in a row.” . . .
“We have data for almost half of 2017 at this point. It’s still quite provisional, but it suggests that we’re in for another increase” in drug-related deaths, he said. “If we’re not careful, we could end up with declining life expectancy for three years in a row, which we haven’t seen since the Spanish flu, 100 years ago.” (Read more from “US Life Expectancy Falls AGAIN, Worst Record in Over 50 Years” HERE)
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