U.S. Life Expectancy Fell Again in 2021 as Covid, Overdoses Took Toll
Preliminary data from CDC show life expectancy among Americans decreased nearly one year on average to 76.1 years
Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped in 2021 for a second consecutive year as Covid-19 and overdoses drove up mortality rates, preliminary data showed.
Americans’ life expectancy last year fell 0.9 year on average to 76.1 years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday. It was a smaller drop than in 2020, when life expectancy decreased 1.8 years, the data showed, but the combined figures for the two years were the largest since the 1920s, the CDC said. “None of us are OK,” said Steve Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University.
The data demonstrated that some groups have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic as well as the opioid crisis, which claimed some 108,000 lives last year. Indigenous Americans had the biggest drop in life expectancy in 2021 at 1.9 years, the data showed, bringing their life expectancy to 65.2 years, down 6.6 years since 2019.
The decline among Native Americans was driven by higher Covid-19 death rates than in 2020, unintentional injuries including overdoses and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis.
“We have a crisis of early deaths among American Indians,” said Donald Warne, associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of North Dakota and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.
Covid-19 accounted for more than half of the increase in deaths among white people in 2021, the data showed, while unintentional injuries including overdoses accounted for about 12%.
Life expectancy declined less among Black people than white people in 2021, the data showed, reflecting in part the higher burden of deaths among some minority groups in the early phases of the pandemic. Black people in the U.S. had a life expectancy of 70.8 years last year, according to the CDC, compared with 76.4 years for white people.
“We continue to see disparities for people of color,” said Ada Stewart, a family physician with Cooperative Health in Columbia, S.C., and board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians. “They did not fare well during the pandemic.”
Black and Hispanic Americans have been hard hit by an overdose crisis driven primarily by the spread of fentanyl produced in makeshift Mexican labs. Higher rates of death in the category that includes overdoses reflects poorer access to treatment for many minority groups, said Karen Scott, president of the nonprofit Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts.
“Addressing the overdose crisis requires acknowledging that you have to work on many fronts at one time,” she said.
Deaths attributed to flu, pneumonia and Alzheimer’s dropped in 2021, the data showed. For Alzheimer’s in particular, a lower death toll in 2021 reversed a high tally in 2020, when deaths from the disease rose 18% from the year before.
“The truly vulnerable were left in drastic situations,” said Beth Kallmyer, vice president of care and support for the Alzheimer’s Association.