Here’s How to Reverse the Drop in US Life Expectancy
Covid vaccinations, gun safety laws and medications to treat opioid addiction can improve public health.
A nurse prepares Covid-19 booster shot in Los Angeles on Dec. 2, 2022.
Photographer: Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
With national attention focused on politics, inflation and the war in Ukraine, the recent news that life expectancy at birth in the US fell to 76.1 years in 2021 barely registered for many Americans.
But the recent decline of 2.7 years since 2019 was the largest since World War I — and erased all of the gains in life expectancy since 1996. What’s more, the loss of life was even more staggering for Black Americans, who lost four years of life expectancy, and Indigenous Americans, who lost more than six.