US life expectancy is still lower than it was before the pandemic

The 2022 overall life expectancy at birth in the US was 77.5 years, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The number is a modest rise from 2021. Life expectancy grew over a year from 76.4. However, it was not enough to rebound to pre-pandemic life expectancy.

CDC experts quoted by NBC News and CNN attribute the rise to the reduction in deaths from Covid-19. Still, smaller decreases in other causes also contributed to the rise.

NBC cited a reduction in deaths related to cancer, heart disease, homicide, and unintentional injuries, especially car accidents, along with other reasons.

The US lost 2.2 years of life expectancy during the pandemic: it went from 78.8 in 2019 to 77 in 2020 and finally 76.4 in 2021, when most developed countries were starting to recover.

According to the CDC experts, the US is taking longer than other developed nations to recover from the pandemic deaths. They attribute that tendency to two main factors.

The first one is that the US experienced more Covid-19 deaths per capita than any other developed nation, according to experts cited by The Washington Post.

The newspaper detailed that the political polarization surrounding the response to the pandemic and the low vaccination rates affected the number of deaths.

The second reason is that the US already had a life expectancy problem: its numbers in 2019 were already far from those of other developed nations like Japan (84.4), Spain (83.5), or the UK (81.7).

The Washington Post details that life expectancy in America grew consistently throughout the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st.

However, the number stopped moving as fast. In 2010, the country entered a period of stagnation in that metric, while in other developed nations, it continued to grow, the newspaper explains.

Experts told the newspaper that other causes, aside from Covid-19 deaths, are slowing the growth in life expectancy. Factors like gun violence, overdose, and other diseases also affect the number.

Gun violence became the leading cause of death for young people in the country, surpassing car accident deaths in 2020, which affects the overall life expectancy average.

A CDC expert told CNN that another factor flattening the numbers before 2019 was drug overdoses. According to the CDC data, it was also a significant factor in the slow 2022 recovery.

Still, according to The Washington Post, those factors are insufficient to understand America's life expectancy stagnation and slow recovery. The newspaper did an article series about it.

They found that chronic illnesses are the most significant drivers of slow and insufficient growth in life expectancy. Conditions such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer play an important role, according to their research.