Life expectancy in the United States has rebounded after slipping at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Between 2019 and 2021, US life expectancy dropped 2.4 years. However, in 2022, it rose back up one year; in 2023, it increased by almost another full year.
The recovery is at least partly attributed to a drop in deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses.
The CDC says individuals born last year are forecasted to live 78.4 years. While it remains below the 78.8 years recorded in 2019, it represents a substantial recovery from the steep decline.
Last year, the coronavirus was linked to roughly 12 deaths for every 100,000 people, around a quarter of the rate recorded just one year prior. This moved COVID-19 from the fourth to the tenth leading cause of death in the United States.
Earlier this month, The Dallas Express reported that a two-year congressional probe concluded that COVID-19 likely originated from a Chinese lab where researchers were working with the virus. The 557-page report came roughly five years after the virus first emerged overseas.
“One of the major reasons we saw such a big drop in life expectancy was the massive death toll from Covid. So once we started to get control of Covid-19 mortality through vaccination, it was expected that life expectancy would start climbing back up,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health, per CNN.
Another factor contributing to the heightened life expectancy numbers is the drop in drug overdose deaths. Between 2022 and 2023, drug overdose deaths fell by 4%, the first decline in over five years.
Last year, the United States also recorded a decline in obesity rates for the first time in a decade. Between 2022 and 2023, obesity in American adults aged 26-75 fell 0.15%, equivalent to hundreds of thousands of fewer people with obesity in the country.