American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016, fueled by a staggering 21% rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, The Washington Post reports.
Overall, life expectancy dropped by a tenth of a year, from 78.7 to 78.6, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It fell two-tenths of a year for men, who have much higher overdose death rates, from 76.3 to 76.1 years. Women’s life expectancy held steady at 81.1 years.
The United States has not seen two years of declining life expectancy since 1962 and 1963, when influenza caused an inordinate number of deaths. In 1993, there was a one-year drop during the worst of the AIDS epidemic.
The development is a dismal sign for the United States, which boasts some of the world’s highest spending on medical care, and more evidence of the toll the nation’s opioid crisis is exacting on younger and middle-aged Americans, experts say.
More than 42,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses alone in 2016, a 28% increase over 2015.
“The story does come down to young people,” says Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. “It’s the overdose story, to a large extent.”
Read the full story, and revisit Business Report’s June 2017 cover story on how the opioid epidemic is affecting Louisiana’s workforce.
