Life Expectancy: We’re Number 27

Life expectancy in the United States has seen a “historic decline” since 2015, the biggest decrease in a century, partly due to the opioid crisis and party due to the COVID pandemic. In 2019, before the pandemic, life expectancy in the United States was 78.85 years; in 2020, in decreased to 76.98 years, and in 2021 decreased again to 76.44 years. Altogether, there was a net loss of life expectancy of 2.41 years. Hit the hardest during the pandemic were Hispanic, Black, Native American, and Asian populations. But in 2021, the largest decreases occurred in non-Hispanic white population.

Jessica Y. Ho found that “life expectancy in the United States lags well behind that of other high-income countries,” dropping from near the middle in the 1980s to near the bottom in the mid-2000s. Her study found that American men lived 5.18 years lower and American women lived 5.82 years lower than their peers in the world’s high-income countries. Young Americans, ages 25-29, have experienced death rates three times their counterparts.

In their study of early deaths in America, titled “Missing Americans,” Jacob Bor and his colleagues note that 1 million US deaths in 2020 and another 1.1 million US deaths in 2021 “would have been averted if the United States had the mortality rates of other wealthy nations.” They note that the number of excess US deaths relative to its peers is “unprecedented in modern times.”

In 2006, a report called the Eight Americas study examined the health inequities in the United States by separating out and analyzing eight distinct groups based on race, urbanicity, geography, income per capita, and homicide rates. In a November 2024 study, the Eight Americas groups were expanded to ten. The authors of the new study found the disparities “truly alarming,” with over a twenty-year gap in life expectancy between the highest group (Asian Americans, who lived an average of 84 years) and the lowest (American Indian and Alaska Native persons, who lived an average of 63.6 years). One of the lead authors, Christopher J.L. Murray, stated that "These disparities reflect the unequal and unjust distribution of resources and opportunities that have profound consequences on well-being and longevity, especially in marginalized populations."

What countries do better in life expectancy? First is Japan, with a life expectancy of 84.45 years; in second place is Switzerland (83.85); then South Korea (83.53), Australia (83.30), and Spain (83.18). The United States comes in 27th with an average life expectancy of 76.33.

Sources: Claire Klobucista, “US Life Expectancy Is in Decline. Why Aren’t Other Countries Suffering the Same Problem?” Council on Foreign Relations (September 8, 2022), https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/us-life-expectancy-decline-why-arent-other-countries-suffering-same-problem#:~:text=U.S.%20life%20expectancy%20was%20slightly,States%20have%20higher%20life%20expectancie. Ryan K. Masters, Laudan Y. Aron, and Steven H. Woolf, “Changes in Life Expectancy Between 2019 and 2021 in the United States and 21 Peer Countries,” MedRxiv, June 1, 2021, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.05.22273393v4. Jessica Y. Ho, “Causes of America’s Lagging Life Expectancy: An International Comparative Perspective,” Journals of Gerontology: SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2022 77 (S2), https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/77/Supplement_2/S117/6533432. Jacob Bor, Andrew Stokes, Julia Raifman, Atheendar Venkataramani, Mary T. Bassett, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler, “Missing Americans: Early Death in the United States—1933-2021,” PNAS Nexus 2 (6) (June 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad173. Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, Mathew M. Bauman, Zuochen Li, Yikaterina O. Kelly, Chris Schmidt, Chloe Searchinger, et al., “Ten Americas: A Systematic Analysis of Life Expectancy Disparities in the USA,” The Lancet, November 21, 2024, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01495-8/fulltext. The ten Americas are defined as: “America 1—Asian individuals; America 2—Latino individuals in other counties; America 3—White (majority), Asian, and American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) individuals in other counties; America 4—White individuals in non-metropolitan and low-income Northlands; America 5—Latino individuals in the Southwest; America 6—Black individuals in other counties; America 7—Black individuals in highly segregated metropolitan areas; America 8—White individuals in low-income Appalachia and Lower Mississippi Valley; America 9—Black individuals in the non-metropolitan and low-income South; and America 10—AIAN individuals in the West.” Murray quoted in Sara Moniuszko, “Life Expectancy Gap in US Widens to 20 Years Due to ‘Truly Alarming’ Health Disparities, Researchers Say,” CBS News, November 21, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/life-expectancy-gap-20-years/. “Life Expectancy at Birth, Total Years,” World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN).