In the years leading up to the unexpected events of March 2020, U.S. life expectancy was declining, according to a June 1 report published in the American Journal of Public Health.
COVID-19, researchers say, further exaggerated the widening gap of U.S. life expectancy compared to other high-income countries. The factors that have continually contributed to a decline are: obesity, smoking-related mortalities, cardiovascular disease, smoking and drug abuse and suicides.
"In 2020, the United States suffered the largest loss in life expectancy among high-income countries with a sizable ethnic/racial and geographic differences in these losses. …" researchers wrote. "Although most Western European countries experienced improvements in mortality in 2021 compared to 2020, in the United States, life expectancy decreased by a further seven months."
However, researchers also point out that life expectancy is something the U.S. has struggled to maintain consistently over several decades. In 1950, the U.S. had the 12th highest life expectancy, but in 2019 the U.S. dropped to 40th, among countries with at least 500,000 residents.