Why aren’t Americans living longer?

Some generations—especially late Gen X and early Millennials—are already experiencing worse mortality than those before them, according to a new analysis.

Despite major advances in medicine, US life expectancy barely budged in the 2010s, and it still lags that of other wealthy nations.

Researchers have pointed to rising “deaths of despair”—drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related deaths—and stalled progress against heart disease as potential causes, but no single explanation seemed to account for this troubling trend.

In a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Leah Abrams, an assistant professor of community health at Tufts University, and her collaborators from The University of Texas Medical Branch and several research European institutions examined death certificate data for US residents born between the 1890s and 1980s. The team analyzed changes in mortality from 1979 through 2023 across age groups and over time.

The researchers analyzed deaths from all causes and from three of the most common ones in the United States: cardiovascular disease, cancer, and so-called external causes, which include drug overdoses, suicides, homicides, and accidents. This allowed the researchers to see whether shortened life expectancy has a single driver or if multiple, overlapping crises are unfolding across generations.

The research reveals that some birth cohorts, particularly late Gen Xers and early Millennials, are already experiencing worse outcomes than their predecessors, including dying from diseases once rare in the young.

Here, Abrams digs into what the findings reveal about what we can learn from past decades of US mortality—and what they may signal for the country’s future:

The post Why aren’t Americans living longer? appeared first on Futurity.

from Futurity https://ift.tt/qDgZAnT