Wednesday, January 24, 2018

We're Dying Earlier in the U.S. While People in Other Countries are Living Longer

Our life expectancy in the U.S. decreased for the second year in a row in 2016 to 78.6 years. The drop looks small at first blush -0.1 years, but it's alarming. Life expectancy in the United States is lower than in most other OECD countries and the gap is getting wider--we're dying earlier in the U.S. while people in other countries are living longer. I could not do as good a job of explaining why as Bill Gardner did in this post, so I recommend you read his explanation. 

How are people dying? These are the leading causes of death according to the CDC.
  1. Heart Disease
  2. Cancer
  3. Accidents
  4. Chronic lower respiratory disease
  5. Stroke
  6. Alzheimer's
  7. Diabetes
  8. Flu and pneumonia
  9. Kidney disease
  10. Suicide
The rate of death decreased for seven of these 10, but increased for accidents, Alzheimer's and suicide. We also know drug overdose deaths rose an appalling 21% from 2015 to 2016