"America has a life expectancy crisis," asserted a recent headline in The Washington Post. Why a crisis? Because American average life expectancy has been flat and then declining for the past decade or so.
One bit of recent good news: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in November that average life expectancy at birth in 2022 was 77.5 years. While that is down from its 2014 peak of 78.8 years, the CDC notes that this is a post-pandemic increase of 1.1 years from its nadir of 76.1 years in 2021. The increase from 2021 to 2022, according to the CDC, "primarily resulted from decreases in mortality due to COVID-19, heart disease, unintentional injuries, cancer, and homicide. Declines in COVID-19 mortality accounted for approximately 84% of the increase in life expectancy." While the big recent dip in American life expectancy was largely the result of the ravages of the COVID pandemic, the trend over the prior 10 years was basically flat.
