Life expectancy in the US has fallen for the second year in a row, new data from the World Bank reveal.
Opioid overdoses, alcohol abuse and suicide are the three factors driving the decrease, particularly among middle-age, white Americans and those living in rural communities, researchers warn.
The average American had a life expectancy of 78 years and 7.2 months in 2016, down 0.1 years from 2015 – and nearly two years lower than other developed nations.
‘This story is less about the size of the drop and more about the fact that life expectancy in the US is not increasing at the rate of other developed countries,’ Dr Steven Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University, co-author of the British Medical Journal report, told Daily Mail Online.
The graph above from the BMJ shows how life expectancy rates in the US have increased at a considerably lower pace than in other developed countries over the past three decades
In 1960, the US had the highest life expectancy in the world, 2.4 years higher than the average for countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Since the 1980s, Dr Woolf said, the pace has fallen off because medical advances haven’t kept up with other health issues.
The life expectancy fell below the OECD average in 1998, plateaued in 2012, and is now one-and-a-half years lower than the average.
Dr Woolf said he was not surprised to see a second year of decline, and that ‘all factors point to the same thing happening next year.’
The three key factors are drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide.
Rates of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent between 2000 and 2014, a crisis fueled by the rapid increase in abuse of highly addictive opioid drugs.
The opioid epidemic in America claimed the lives of 42,000 people in the US in 2016, up from 33,000 in 2015.
Experts have estimated that the crisis is costing $96 billion per year.
Overall, 63,600 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016, down slightly from 64,000 the previous year.
Overdose deaths are now the leading cause of death among young Americans – killing more in a year than were ever killed annually by HIV, gun violence or car crashes.
The government is scrambling to halt the opioid crisis by reducing access to the druge, improving emergency responses to reverse overdoses and prevent deaths, and enhancing access to effective addiction treatment.
Alongside drug overdoses, deaths from alcohol abuse have also increased.
Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of death in the US behind tobacco and poor died and physical inactivity, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
An estimated 88,000 people – approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women – die from alcohol-related causes annually.
In 2014, the World Health Organization reported that alcohol contributed to more than 200 diseases and injury-related health conditions including liver cirrhosis, cancers, injuries and alcohol poisoning.
The CDC reported that alcohol misuse cost the US nearly $250billion in 2010.
The third factor that’s seen significant increases is suicide, which is now the 10th leading cause of death in the country.
The suicide rate in the US rose 24 percent between 1999 and 2014.
The rate is disproportionately high among white Americans, especially adults aged 25-59 years, those with limited education, and women.
The steepest increases have occurred in rural areas and regions with longstanding social and economic challenges.
Suicide costs the US an estimated $69 billion annually, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Dr Woolf points out that while drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide draw a lot of attention, there are many other factors behind the life expectancy trend.
‘In our research we’ve found dozens of other areas in which the US is behind other nations, including children’s medical care, teen pregnancy, injury treatment, and chronic diseases like diabetes,’ Dr Woolf said. ‘It’s just a matter of connecting the dots.
A 2013 panel investigated the compared decline and found that Americans are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as heavy caloric intake, drug abuse, and heavy alcohol consumption.
They are also more likely to live in cities that favor cars over pedestrians and are more likely to own firearms.
To top it all off, the panel said, the US to have weaker social welfare supports and lacks universal health insurance.
‘The consequences of these choices are dire: not only more deaths and illness, but also escalating health care costs, a sicker workforce and a less competitive economy. Future generations may pay the greatest price,’ the report says.
Dr Woolf said that in order to reverse the trend back to increasing life expectancy, policymakers need to stop defaulting to a ‘set of policies for downstream problems’.
‘It’s a mistake not to look upstream at the driving factors behind the decline,’ he said.
‘There are a few policies out there that would actually address the issues of education and social inequality, but they’re not getting the attention they deserve.’
Dr Woolf said that addressing underlying issues will impact the country in many different ways.
‘The good news is, addressing root causes behind those three factors will close the gap across many health domains as well as bring economic stability to the middle class that has been begging for it.’