In the biggest single-year decline in more than 75 years and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy in the US dropped by almost two years last year, the finalized statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show.
According to mortality data released by the National Center for Health Statistics, the life expectancy in 2020 is calculated at 77 years, which is a 1.8-year decrease from 2019. Life expectancy among women dipped 1.5 years to 79.9 while among men fell 2.1 years to 74.2 years last year.
With more than 600,000 fatalities, heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death, followed by COVID-19, which ranked as the third with more than 350,000 fatalities. The number of accidental injury fatalities reached beyond 200,000 while diabetes deaths surpassed 100,000 for the first time in 2020.
Another novelty is that suicide fell from the top 10 leading causes of death although the list stayed mainly consistent with 2019.
The age-adjusted death rate- overall for the whole population- increased last year by 16.8 percent to 835.4 deaths per 100,000 people.
The death rate has increased in every age group over 15 years old and every race-ethnicity-sex group with the Hispanic population seeing the greatest surges in death rates with 42.7 percent for men and 32.4 percent for women.
Close behind is the black population with a death rate rise of 28 percent among men and 25 percent among women, followed by white men and women, who saw an increased rate of 13.4 % and 12.1% respectively.
Infant mortality, on the other hand, fell to a record low of 541.9 infant deaths per 100,000 live births, or 2,9 percent.
Preliminary data from the first six months of 2020 released early this year showed that life expectancy fell by one year, with July estimates for the entire year predicting a 1.5-year drop in life expectancy compared to 2019.
According to a BMJ study published last month, the US went through the second-largest drop in life expectancy among wealthy countries during the COVID pandemic, recording over 810,000 COVID-related deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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