Health Farm

-- Drug overdoses, suicides, alcohol-related illnesses, and obesity are largely to blame for shrinking life expectancy in America - study

Mortality rates over the last half century don’t look too bad, with life expectancy increasing by nearly 10 years, from 69.9 years in 1959 to 78.9 years in 2016.

However, a more recent snapshot of life expectancy shows the rate has buttoned off in the US – despite the government spending more on healthcare per capita than any other country in the world.

US life expectancy plateaued after 2010 and then went into reverse in 2014, dropping for three consecutive years, from 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 in 2017.

Researchers say underlying causes have been building since the 1990s. Fatal drug overdoses for people in midlife, for example, increased 386.5% between 1999 and 2017.

Midlife mortality rates related to obesity increased 114%. More specifically, mortality rates linked to alcohol-related problems, such as chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, increased 40.6% overall during the same time period.

For people between the ages of 25 and 34, the rate of alcohol-related disease deaths increased by 157.6% from 1999 to 2017. Suicide rates increased by 38.3% for people aged 25-to-64, and by 55.9% for people ages 55-to-64.

Researchers don’t expect the negative trend in life expectancy to change anytime soon as the underlying drivers remain.