U.S. Life Expectancy Climbs for the First Time in 4 Years

CNN cites new reports from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in reporting that life expectancy in the United States increased slightly for the first time in four years, as the number of deadly drug overdoses and six of the top 10 causes of death declined. According to the data, life expectancy in the United States in 2018 was 78.7 years, up from 78.6 years in the previous year. The number of drug overdose deaths, meanwhile, dropped to 67,367 in 2018 from 70,237 in 2017. "We tried to determine why the life expectancy increased and we can actually break it down by what causes of death contributed the most to the increase," said study author Kenneth Kochanek, a researcher at the NCHS in Hyattsville, MD. The decrease in mortality from drug overdose was not the leading contributor. That was still cancer. The new mortality report found that the 10 leading causes of death in 2017 were the same in the following year: heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, and suicide. From 2017 to 2018, death rates fell for six of those causes of death: heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, and Alzheimer's, the research determined. However, death rates increased for influenza, pneumonia, and for suicide, while rates for diabetes and kidney disease did not change meaningfully.