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By Suzanne Blake
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Americans' lifespans are increasing, but it's still nowhere near to the highs of before the pandemic, a new CDC report said this month.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said U.S. life expectancy rose by more than a year to 77 years, 6 months, indicating the reduced coronavirus deaths more than three years after the virus first hit America.
The last time life expectancy was at 77 was around two decades ago. Since then, lifespan was gradually increasing until the pandemic brought the national average to a staggering low.
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"As we move farther away from peak-COVID's effects on life expectancy, we should start to better approximate those pre-COVID levels," Eric Goedereis, a professor at Webster University and a lifespan developmental psychologist, told Newsweek.
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The CDC calculates life expectancy based on the average number of years a baby born in a specific year will live, based on the current death rates. It is seen as one of the most important ways to measure the health of the U.S. population.
Currently, the U.S. life expectancy is lower than many other countries. France, Italy, and Sweden, just to name a few, saw their life expectancies recover far faster than Americans did post-pandemic.
Looking at specific demographics, Hispanic Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives saw life expectancy increase by more than two years last year. At the same time, Black Americans' expectancy rose more than a year and a half, and Asian American life expectancy increased by a year. For white Americans, life expectancy climbed by 10 months.
The pandemic hit Hispanic Americans and Native Americans especially hard, causing life expectancy to drop four and six years respectively.
American Lifespans Stall
For decades, life expectancy increased as new medical breakthroughs became available, but 10 years ago, the age started to stay the same or even go down a bit, no longer increasing. Doctors typically cited overdoses and suicides as the greatest contributors to the stalling American lifespan, and then the pandemic shattered the progress even further.
The virus is estimated to have killed more than 1.1 million people in the United States, and the average lifespan rapidly dropped from 78 years and 10 months in 2019 to 76 years and five months in 2021.
After heart disease and cancer, the coronavirus made up the third leading cause of death in 2021, and in 2022, it was still number four.
The CDC said that the lower number of COVID-19 deaths contributed to 84 percent of the increase in life expectancy. Heart disease also declined, adding to 4 percent of the increase.
Still, it's not the full reason for the previously declining American lifespan. In 2022, suicides reached a record high since 1941. And drug overdose deaths were surging as well, the CDC said.
"While we're seeing fewer hits to life expectancy due to COVID, we're seeing a peak in suicides," Goedereis said.
"We're seeing increased deaths from drug overdoses. Those events are making it harder to bring life expectancy back to 'pre-COVID' numbers because even though we're doing better managing the effects of COVID, we're still seeing very difficult pulls on the data from other, non-normal events."
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