Surlliality linked to COVVI-19, Opioid crisis and cardiovascular diseases participate in the fall in this indicator revealing the state of health of the Americans.
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“Historical”, “horrible”, “frightening” … Demographers are struggling to find the best qualifier to designate the fall of life expectancy in the United States, which has worsens for two years, under the combined effects COVID-19 and structuring factors of American society. The announcement, at the end of August, by the American agency for the health of centers for disease control (CDC), of a loss of life expectancy of almost a year between 2020 and 2021 is certainly not a surprise Total, since the American population has regularly lost a few months of life expectancy every year since 2014. But demographers are nonetheless surprised by the extent of the phenomenon.
“This drop from 77 to 76.1 years brought life expectancy at birth in the United States to its lowest level since 1996”, write CDC . Even more alarming, this is the second decline in two years, since 2020 had already recorded a fall of 1.8 years. A decline of 2.7 years in two years, therefore, which is the highest drop in this indicator since the 1920s.
Life expectancy at birth is a statistical calculation allowing to establish the average lifespan of a fictitious generation subject to the conditions of mortality of the moment. Concretely, this means that women and men who would have had, throughout their lives, the death rates by sex and age observed in 2021 in the United States died on average at 76.1 years. More specifically, at 79.1 years for women and 73.2 years for men. Of course, this calculation remains fictitious, and it is a safe bet that living conditions will evolve from year to year – for better or for worse. But this indicator has the advantage of summarizing in a figure the state of health of a population at an instant T. Concerning the United States, this summary has what alarm.
comorbidities and vaccine hesitation
Among the most developed nations, the United States is the only country to know such a situation. “Some high -income countries have undergone any loss of life expectancy during the pandemic and others which had suffered a loss in 2020 have largely returned to the land lost in 2021”, notes Noreen Goldman, professor of demography and D ‘Public Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. For example, in France, life expectancy has decreased very sharply in 2020, before increasing in 2021, to 82.5 years old, almost returning to the prepaandic level (82.9 years). It is 79.3 years for men and 85.4 years for women.
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