Life Expectancy
The number of years today’s newborn children would live if subject to the mortality risks prevailing for the US population.
Why did we include this measure?
Life expectancy is a common and intuitive measure of how well we succeed in living long and healthy lives. When people die young, it reflects unhealthy habits, availability and quality of health care, and external threats to safety, such as violence. (We note that life expectancy is not simply the average age at which people are currently dying, which, for older Americans, is partially based on factors that occurred in the distant past. Life expectancy tells us how long we can expect today’s newborns to live based on the risks that the rest of the population faces now.)
How does the US rank globally?
- Specific Measure: (Same as above.)
(Source: Same as above).
- Percentage of countries the US outperforms: 62% (out of 117 countries)
- International Rank Trend: Worsening
National Trend Improving
What do the data show?
Life expectancy currently stands at 79.3 years, an all-time US high, though we remain in the middle of the pack of high-income countries globally. This figure was steadily improving for decades, even centuries, through 2014 but then actually declined. A sharp decline and rebound also occurred during the COVID pandemic. Currently, we fall just behind Panama, Albania, and the Czech Republic.
What might explain these patterns?
The main immediate causes behind the pre-COVID decline were increased drug overdoses and alcohol-related deaths among young people and the middle-aged, especially men. During COVID, the US also had an unusually high “excess mortality” rate, which reflects both the direct and indirect effects on mortality from COVID.
For more information about data sources and treatments, download the Data Notes.