Scientists throughout the United States have been noticing declines in US life expectancy in the past couple of years but most attributed this drop to the results of the Covid pandemic. While various other countries who were hit hard by the virus bounced back and saw increases in life expectancy, the United States was not one of those. This is prompting researchers to study what it is about the way that we live that has been causing this decline that is not seen in other advanced countries. Other countries are seeing life expectancies around the age of 82 meanwhile the US is at approximately 76 years. What is causing this trend and is there anything that can be done to reverse these numbers?
Some noticeable differences we can see between the US and other countries are vastly different lifestyles. For many years, people heard that what made Americans so unhealthy was poor diets and habits. However, in recent years they have found that even Americans who eat their vegetables, exercise, and don’t participate in smoking are still likely to die at a younger age than in countries such as Cuba or Lebanon. What most scientists have found is that it is not just about living a healthy lifestyle but simply the effects of living in the US. Just living in America is shown to lead to a lower life expectancy suggesting that the issues present are not targeted at select groups of people but the country as a whole. Researchers were looking at a variety of systematic differences between the US and other countries whether that be health systems, poverty, environment, social issues, individual behavior, and more. One huge observation made was deaths before the age of 50 which included deaths due to drugs, murders, disease, and suicide many of which are large concerns for Americans in society today. Crimmins spotlights firearms and drugs being primary contributors to death rates which I believe is becoming a growing issue for people of all demographics in the United States.
One positive we can see is that once Americans reach the age of 75 they are more likely to live longer than those in other countries, although this is assuming we make it to that age. While many aspects of our society have failed us, the US tends to be better at monitoring and testing for cancer, cholesterol, and blood pressure making it difficult for health concerns to go unnoticed. While this is promising for Americans, the fact that our life expectancy is dropping cannot be ignored as it is primarily affecting newer generations of children, teens, and infants who were born into unfortunate conditions.
The National Library of Medicine found that despite the advanced technology we have, Americans are more prone to injuries and illnesses whether that be individuals in lower-income households or well-off individuals. Clearly this is not just an issue of physical health but the various social concerns that exist uniquely in America that need to be addressed in order to create promising change in current life expectancy trends. One of the solutions that Sawhney suggests is to make the American lifestyle similar to that of England or France with a focus on a more freeing way of life. In following the footsteps of other healthy countries, I believe the US can get mortality rates up to match other advanced countries and create a more hopeful future for upcoming generations.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24006554/
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?end=2020&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=1960&view=chart
4 comments:
It seems like young deaths (under 50) are a much bigger problem in the US than other developed countries. I agree with you that drugs and guns are a big cause of that. Yet another sign pointing to stricter gun control methods.
I agree that the problem stems from something in our country. In the United States there is a wide berth of issues that we are above average in like crime rates, murders, drug dealing, gang lifestyles, gun availability, school shootings, and many others. We may not lead the world in these categories, but we are high enough on each statistic to create a dangerous and unhealthy living community in our country.
This post does a great job of highlighting a concerning trend in the United States because life expectancy has been dropping at a significant rate, despite the advances in healthcare and tech over the past decade. I really like how you not only noted the fact that COVID has had a HUGE impact but also the fact that the country in it itself contributes to a range of risky factors like poverty, environment, behavior, and so much more. A big and primary cause that I believe contributes to the decline in life expectancy is largely due to mental illness, drugs, and homicide. As this post states, effective policies need to be implemented to reduce the number of deaths related to these factors. Although healthcare and tech have made big booms, there needs to be more attention drawn to factors that can be just as debilitating over a long period of time.
There are definitely a multitude of factors that would contribute to the lower life expectancy in the US. There’s definitely still a lot of people working from home after Covid which has made our lifestyle more sedentary, and a lot of substance abuse over the past few years could definitely be a cause to this decrease since Covid. On social media I’ve heard stories of people that visit Europe from the US tend to lose weight due to their lack of processed foods and more of a culture around walking to places.
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