U.S. life expectancy increases again

Life expectancy in the United States increased for the second year in a row in 2022 as death rates for some of the country’s recent leading killers—COVID-19, cancer, heart disease, accidental injuries, and homicide—fell, according to the most recent information released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That means babies born in 2022 can expect to live a bit longer on average than those born a year earlier—77.5 years versus 76.4 years for the total population—a March 2024 CDC report showed.

However, certain groups saw changes from the prior year. American Indian-Alaskan Native people (AIAN) had a life expectancy of just 65.6 in 2021, which rose to 67.9 in 2022. Hispanic people’s life expectancies rose from 77.8 years to 80 years, and the life expectancy for Black non-Hispanic people rose from 71.2 to 72.8

The slight uptick was mainly due to a drop in death rates from COVID. Lower mortality rates were also reported for heart disease, unintentional injuries, cancer, and homicide. These declines helped offset a rise in deaths related to flu and pneumonia, as well as suicide, kidney disease, perinatal (after birth) conditions, congenital differences, and nutritional deficiencies, the CDC noted.

Heart disease and cancer

These two conditions remained in the lead for causes of death, just as they did in the previous year. Heart disease was the number one cause of death in the U.S. in 2022, with nearly 211 deaths out of every 100,000 people. That means nearly three-quarters of a million people died that year from heart disease.

Over the long term, deaths by heart disease have gone down. Back in 1950, about 589 people per 100,000 were dying from heart disease. The number went steadily down over the following decades, reaching a low of about 162 per 100,000 deaths in 2019. After that, it increased again, rising by over 9 percent between 2019 and 2022. The reasons for this are complex and may include the heart-related effects of COVID, as well as a rise in obesity and high blood pressure, both conditions that raise the risk of heart disease.

Cancer-related deaths for some types are on the rise, specifically for uterine, testicular, oral, and pancreatic cancers. But there is a lot more good news than bad news when it comes to cancer.

Deaths from many more types of cancer have been dropping. The overall historical trend is steadily downward, with a shift from around 194 deaths per 100,000 in 1950 to around 142 per 100,000 in 2022. That’s also down from 2021, which saw 146.6 deaths per 100,000.

According to the National Cancer Institute, between 2018 and 2022, the overall death rate for cancer fell by 1.9 percent for men and 1.3 percent for women. Many specific cancers, including lung, Non-Hodgkin and Hodgkin lymphoma, ovarian, larynx, and myeloma cancers, have seen death rates fall by as much as 2 to 4.5 percent.

These drops are in part related to advances in treatment for a range of cancers. They’re also due to a rise in preventive steps like quitting smoking, which lowers lung cancer and related cancer rates, and receiving the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which has brought down cervical cancer rates.

Unintentional injuries

Accidental injuries overtook COVID as the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2022, with a total of 227,039 deaths in 2022, or over 68 per 100,000 people. These kinds of deaths include falls, traffic accidents, and accidental poisonings.

COVID, flu, and pneumonia

In 2022, COVID was the fourth leading cause of death. According to the CDC, deaths involving COVID have dropped a great deal, from a high in 2021 of 463,267 deaths to nearly half that in 2022, with 246,267 deaths. In 2023 the number fell again by more than 70 percent, to 75,945.

Deaths from influenza (flu) and pneumonia tend to fluctuate year by year, related to the severity of the flu season, rates of vaccination, and public health efforts at prevention. Patterns of respiratory infections became less predictable after the pandemic, related to public health measures to reduce transmission of COVID and the development of immunity among people in the population.

Drug-related deaths

After drug overdose deaths nearly quadrupled during the first two decades of the 21st century, between 2021 and 2022 the overall drug overdose death numbers remained virtually unchanged. This means the rates didn’t go down or up but stayed at about 32.6 deaths per 100,000.

That’s an overall statistic, though. The numbers for specific kinds of drug-related deaths tell different stories. Between 2021 and 2022, drug overdose deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl and tramadol (but not including methadone) went up by over four percent, and overdose deaths that involved cocaine also went up more than 12 percent. Deaths involving psychostimulants like methamphetamine also went up by four percent.

On the other hand, drug overdose deaths involving heroin went down by nearly 36 percent, and deaths from natural and semisynthetic opioids, like oxycodone, hydrocodone, and morphine went down by about 12.5 percent.

Number of suicides is highest ever

The suicide rate in 2022 rose 14.3 per 100,000 people, up 0.2 points from the prior year, making it the highest rate since 1941. The actual number of suicides in 2022 was the highest in recorded history in the US, with 49,449. The next-highest year was 2018 with 48,344 suicides.

This continues an ongoing climb. Rates of suicide in the U.S. rose by 37 percent between 2000 and 2018. After decreasing slightly by 5 percent between 2018 and 2020, rates of suicide reached their peak again in 2022, according to the CDC.

On a global level, the U.S. still has some catching up to do when it comes to life expectancy. Despite spending a lot on health care, the U.S. still has a lower life expectancy than ten of its peer nations, including China, Germany, Ireland, Costa Rica, France, Israel, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, and Japan.