There was a time when Americans enjoyed a longer life expectancy than people in other countries.
But that was in the 1930s — and new research finds that since the 1950s, US life expectancy has fallen far behind many other countries.
In fact, citizens of Albania, Lebanon, the Czech Republic and Cuba can now expect to live longer and healthier lives than the average American.
“We may be one of the richest countries in the world, and we certainly outspend every country on health care, but Americans are sicker and die earlier than people in dozens of countries,” study author Steven Woolf said in a news release.
“Even Americans with healthy behaviors, for example, those who are not obese or do not smoke, appear to have higher disease rates than their peers in other countries,” according to the research, published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Falling US life expectancy has been documented before, but this new study is exceptional because it wasn’t limited to wealthy developed nations and because it expanded its scope beyond the 1980s.
“Experts typically consider the 1980s or 1990s as the inflection point when growth in US life expectancy began underperforming compared with other countries,” said Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University.
But the new analysis “shows that premature deaths among Americans are a much larger and older public health issue than previously believed,” he added.
Starting in 1950, the increases in US life expectancy that were seen before World War II started to slow. The downward trend continued and by 1968, the study found, America had fallen to 29th place.
And despite a brief upswing in lifespan from 1974 to 1982, life expectancy began to drop again in 1983, flatlined from 2010 to 2019 and plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic years.
The average life expectancy in the US is now just under 77 years, a nearly nine-year improvement from 1950.
But by comparison, a Japanese citizen can now expect to live for nearly 85 years.
Several experts have weighed in on why stateside life expectancy is dropping compared to other nations.
Among the causes are drug abuse, traffic accidents, lack of health care and gun violence.
“There’s the opioid epidemic, which is clearly ours … other countries didn’t have that because those drugs were more controlled,” Eileen Crimmins, professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California, told NPR.
“Some of the difference comes from the fact that we are more likely to drive more miles,” which leads to more fatal crashes, Crimmins added, noting that “two years difference in life expectancy probably comes from the fact that firearms are so available in the United States.”
The study found major differences between the states: Life expectancy was generally highest in states throughout the Northeast and West, but lowest in South Central and Midwestern states.
However, notable exceptions exist.
Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that New York state residents had the largest drop in life expectancy in the nation in 2020.
The life expectancy for New Yorkers dropped from an average age of 80.7 in 2019 to 77.7 in 2020.
“Over time we’ve seen widening disparities in health trends at the state level,” Woolf said, adding that even though states can adopt policies that improve health, “many other states that fared poorly in this study are now actively weakening or rolling back such policies.
“We’ll keep falling behind unless we get serious about policy solutions,” Woolf continued.
“When we were doing [the study], we were joking we should call it ‘Live Free and Die,’ ” Crimmins said, referring to the New Hampshire state motto, “Live Free or Die.”
But she was told, “That’s outrageous, that’s too provocative.”
