America’s life expectancy is starting to recover from the pandemic

The average child born in the US last year is expected to live to the age of 77.5, per a new CDC report. That figure is over a full year higher than 2021, but still below what it was before the pandemic.

Background: For decades, US life expectancy rose slightly almost every year. But in the early 2010s, the curve began to flatten and even decline some years, a trend blamed largely on a recent surge in overdose deaths and suicides.

• Once Covid hit, US life expectancy fell sharply, going from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.4 years in 2021.

But last year, things were different. The CDC says more than 80% of the year-plus increase in life expectancy between 2021 and 2022 can be attributed to a drop in Covid deaths, which fell from 462,000 to 245,000.

Fewer deaths from heart disease, unintentional injuries, cancer, and homicides also helped boost life expectancy in 2022 – though some of the gains were offset by increasing mortality from pneumonia, influenza, kidney disease, and suicides.

📸 Big picture: The US has trailed many other developed nations in terms of life expectancy since the 1980s, with the gap slowly growing wider each year. In 2019, the most recent year with available data, the average life expectancy across OECD countries was over two years higher compared to the US (81.0 vs 78.8).