Life Expectancy Falls Again in 2021

Thursday, September 1st, 2022 -- 8:05 AM

(By Jane Greenhalgh, Selena Simmons-Duffin, Wisconsin Public Radio) Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row.

According to Jane Greenhalgh and Selena Simmons-Duffing of Wisconsin Public Radio, in 2019, someone born in the U.S. had a life expectancy of nearly 80 years. In 2020, because of the pandemic, that dropped to 77 years. In 2021 life-span dropped again, to 76.1 years. And for some Americans, life expectancy is even lower, according to a provisional analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The results of this study are very disturbing," says Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor of population health and health equity at Virginia Commonwealth University. "This shows that U.S. life expectancy in 2021 was even lower than in 2020," he says.

Other high-income countries have seen a rebound in life expectancy, which Woolf says makes the U.S. results, "all the more tragic." One of the most dramatic drops in life expectancy in 2021 was among American Indian and Alaskan Native people.

Between 2020 and 2021 the life expectancy for this group fell by almost two years, from 67.1 in 2020 to 65.2 in 2021. "That's horrific," Woolf says. "The losses in the Native American population have been terrible during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it reflects a lot of barriers that tribal communities face in getting access to care," he says.

White Americans also saw a larger decrease in life expectancy in 2021 than Black and Hispanic Americans. This was the reverse of what happened in 2020 when Hispanic Americans saw a 4 year decline and Black Americans saw a 3 year drop.

Life expectancy for white Americans declined by a year in 2021 to 76.4. Black Americans saw a 0.7 year decline to 70.8 years, Hispanic Americans saw a 0.2 year decline to 77.7 years. Asian Americans saw a 0.1 year decline to 83.5 years.

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