For more than a century, American life expectancy has climbed.
A baby born in the United States in 1980, for example, would have been projected to live nearly 34 years longer than a baby born in 1880. That’s mainly because, back in the mid to late 1800s, diphtheria, tuberculosis and dozens of other infectious diseases stood between newborns and adulthood.
Throughout the 1900s, however, the development of vaccines and antibiotics allowed healthcare professionals to treat many of the infectious diseases that once cut so many young lives short. In addition, indoor plumbing allowed people to wash their hands and more safely dispose of feces, helping reduce the spread of disease. Life-extending treatments and medications — bypass surgery, statins, immunotherapy, among others — dramatically reduced the death toll of heart disease and cancer as well. As a result, throughout the 1900s and into the new millennium, U.S. infant mortality plummeted, and life expectancy climbed.
However, in 2014, U.S. life expectancy peaked at 78.8 years. During the next several years, it fell modestly before tumbling downward in 2020 and 2021.
What is the average American life expectancy?
Life expectancy isn’t fate.
Rather, it’s a statistical estimate of the years a group or cohort is expected to live.
Various organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), estimate life expectancy based on annual population and mortality data.
When mortality rates climb or fall, it influences life expectancy calculations. For example, World War I and the subsequent 1918 Influenza pandemic temporarily drove down life expectancy from 1916 to 1918.
Similarly, you don’t have to be an expert in public health to understand the biggest driver of declining life expectancy in 2020 and 2021. That’s when death rates from COVID-19 went from zero to thousands per month.
According to the most recent data, U.S. life expectancy rebounded as excess deaths from COVID-19 fell. In 2022, U.S. life expectancy rose from 76.1 to 77.5 years.
However, that’s still below the 2014 peak, which indicates that other factors also may be at work.
Why is life expectancy falling in the U.S.?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy dropped more in the United States than in Europe, according to an analysis by the health policy nonprofits Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF.
This was driven partly by the U.S. having a higher COVID-19 death rate than other countries — more than twice that of the United Kingdom or Germany, according to a different analysis.
Some people might blame those disparities on the U.S. healthcare system, but such a conclusion is overly simplistic. After all, the U.S. outspends every country in the world in healthcare. Yet, people in the U.S. still live shorter lives than do people elsewhere in the industrialized world.
The average person in Spain or Switzerland, for example, lives five years longer than the average person in the U.S., despite those countries spending much less on healthcare per person. Even on the American continent, Canadians outlive those in the U.S. by more than three years. But the Canadian government spends about $6,438 per person on healthcare, while the U.S. government outlays almost twice that amount.
So if it’s not spending, what does account for falling life expectancy?
Part of the increase stems from deaths from opioid drug overdoses, which rose between 1999 and 2022. However, there’s more to the story, says Stephen Kopecky, M.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiologist and author of the Mayo Clinic Press book “Live Younger Longer.”
“The decline in life span actually started about 10 years ago, well before COVID, and it coincides with not only the opioid crisis but also a lifestyle problem,” says Dr. Kopecky.
Consumption of processed foods rises
The drop in U.S. life span occurred as eating habits shifted away from minimally processed whole foods and toward ultraprocessed foods like sugary breakfast cereals and toaster pastries.
The consumption of ultraprocessed foods grew from 53.5% of calories in 2001 to about 57% of calories in 2018, according to an analysis of the eating habits of 41,000 adults in the U. S.
More recent research has linked higher consumption of processed foods to an increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease.
Movement patterns fall
According to several reviews of movement patterns, people in the U.S. are becoming more sedentary. This isn’t only about spending less time at the gym. People also increasingly use vehicles rather than walk and spend more of their work and leisure time sitting.
Research has linked this increased sitting time with cardiovascular disease, obesity, high blood sugar and cancer.
Preventable deaths climb
The lifestyle changes mentioned above may contribute to an increased risk of premature death from cardiovascular disease, says Dr. Kopecky.
Cardiovascular disease mortality peaked around 1970 and then started coming down as effective medicines and interventions like stents, angioplasty and bypass surgery helped keep people alive, he says.
However, around 2011, heart disease deaths started rising, according to the CDC, in lockstep with increased sedentary behavior and consumption of processed foods.
How to live longer and healthier
You’ve likely gotten the message that eating a nutritious diet and getting enough exercise are both critical for your health and longevity. However, what’s less obvious is how to do it.
The answer, according to Dr. Kopecky, lies in setting tiny goals you know you can achieve.
For example, if you are currently sedentary, you might decide to walk five or 10 minutes after dinner. Or you could do what Dr. Kopecky does. He works on the fifth floor of a building. When thirsty, he takes the steps to the first-floor break room, grabs a bottle of water and then runs back up the steps.
“It doesn’t take much activity to improve your cardiovascular fitness significantly,” says Dr. Kopecky.
The same is true with dietary changes.
One study found that replacing just a half tablespoon a day of saturated fat, such as butter, with a healthier fat, such as olive oil, reduced the risk of heart disease.
When you set goals like the ones described above and achieve them, your confidence grows, which increases your ability to set and achieve future goals, says Dr. Kopecky.
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