U.S. Life Expectancy Decreased for Third Year

In the not so happy news of last year, U.S. life expectancy decreased once again, establishing a disturbing three-year trend. Close to two years ago SevenPonds reported that U.S. life expectancy had dropped to the lowest it had been in 20 years — and no one was exactly sure why. At the end of 2018, the U.S. government verified the concerning trend has continued through 2017, placing the most blame on escalating drug-related deaths and suicides.

According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, Americans could expect to live 78.6 years at birth in 2017, down a tenth of a year from the 2016 estimate.

That dip of 0.1 years, has been a consistent downward trend every year for the last three years. While not a huge decrease when taken on its own, it suggests that the lowered life expectancy in 2015 was more than a blip. Those small fractions also translate to meaningful real-world figures: There were 69,255 additional deaths in 2017 compared to 2016.

Fentanyl Deaths Mostly to Blame 

A companion government report indicated drug overdoses significantly contributed to the  trend, setting another annual record in 2017, peaking at 70,237 — up from 63,632 the year before. The opioid epidemic continued to take a relentless toll, with 47,600 deaths in 2017 from drugs sold on the street such as fentanyl and heroin, as well as prescription narcotics. The Washington Post reported that was also a record number, driven largely by an increase in fentanyl deaths.

While these numbers are disturbing, deaths from legal painkillers such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone did not increase in 2017. Those totals were virtually identical to the numbers in 2016, when 14,495 overdose deaths were attributed to oxycodone and hydrocodone, and 3,194 from methadone. The number of heroin deaths, 15,482, also did not rise from the previous year.

This leveling off of prescription drug deaths may reflect a small impact from efforts in recent years to curb the over-availability of legal painkillers to users and dealers on the streets, according to Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics. Those measures include prescription drug monitoring programs that help prevent substance abusers from obtaining multiple prescriptions by “doctor shopping.” In addition, the overdose antidote naloxone has been made more widely available and education and treatment programs are increasing.

Credit: medivest.com

Suicides Also on the Rise

The mortality statistics also showed a substantial increase in suicides in 2017. These have been rising steadily for nearly two decades and have been ranked as the 10th most common cause of death in the United States since 2008. Nearly four times as many men died by suicide than women in 2017, but the rate for women has seen a higher rate of increase over the last 18 years. The increase showed up in all age categories except for people over 75, where there was a decrease.

Online news source Ars Technica reported the most striking trend in the suicide deaths was their geographic distribution. In 1999, the most urban counties in the United States had a suicide rate of 9.6 deaths per 100,000 people. In 2017, that rate had increased by 16 percent, to 11.1 deaths per 100,000. In the most rural counties, however, the 1999 rate of 13.1 per 100,000 jumped by 53 percent, to 20 per 100,000 in 2017.

Heart Disease and Cancer Deaths, Though Still High, Are Decreasing

While heart disease and cancer were still the leading causes of death of Americans by a wide margin, killing more than 152 people out of every 100,000 in 2017 — deaths from cancer decreased significantly, thus not adversely affecting U.S. life expectancy. Speaking of the increasing drug and suicide deaths, Joshua M. Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Washington Post, “I think this is a very dismal picture of health in the United States. Life expectancy is improving in many places in the world. It shouldn’t be declining in the United States.”