Life expectancy in the US keeps going down, and a new study says America's worsening inequality could be to blame

https://news.yahoo.com/life-expectancy-us-keeps-going-131200521.html

Aylin Woodward
,Business Insider•November 30, 2019

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The US is the only wealthy country in the world where the life expectancy needle is moving the wrong way.

Between 1959 and 2014, the average length of time that Americans were expected to live was on the rise. Now, for the third year in a row, it's declining, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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This decline can't be linked to just one ethnicity, gender, or geographic area, either: It originates among an entire age group. People between the ages of 25 and 64 in the US are dying at higher rates, wracked by health problems like opioid addiction, obesity, alcoholic liver disease, and suicide.

Despite having the highest per capita health care spending in the world, Americans are "more likely to die before age 65 than people in other countries," Woolf added. "Their children, too, are less likely to live as long."

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The news isn't good if you compare it to other countries, either. In 1960, Americans had the highest life expectancy of any country in the world. But in the past couple of years, the US has plummeted to the bottom of the list of countries with a similar GDP and high average income, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In fact, the US is currently ranked in the mid-40s globally in terms of life expectancy, squished between countries like Lebanon, Cuba, and Chile, which have GDPs that fall far short of our own.

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These deaths can't be traced back to a single cause, either. Woolf's research revealed that mortality among members of this age group has increased from 35 different causes. However, drug overdose, alcohol abuse, and suicide — referred to by some as "deaths of despair" — appear to be the primary culprits.

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Upticks in suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related diseases "are all symptoms of people struggling in a poor economy who can't afford housing, find consistent jobs," and despair because of it, according to Woolf.

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"Forces like income inequality and unstable employment cause psychological distress and drive conditions by which diseases and deaths occur," he added.

In countries around the world, research has shown that people with lower incomes die sooner than their wealthier counterparts. A 2017 study linked low socioeconomic status to significant reductions in life expectancy.

But what makes the US unique, according to Woolf, is that "poor people in other countries live longer than poor people in our country."

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According to Koh's editorial commentary on the new study, the difference in life expectancy between America's top and bottom 1% can be up to 14 years for men and 10 years for women.

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