Drug and alcohol abuse reducing US life expectancy

A report, released yesterday, stated that US life expectancy had declined for the second year in a row, due to increased drug and alcohol abuse, as well as suicides.

Published in the BMJ, previously called the British Medical Journal, the report found that the decrease in life expectancy was especially prevalent in middle-aged, white US residents, and people living in rural areas. The report mirrors the findings of a report issued in December 2017, by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also noted the second consecutive year of declining life expectancy in the US.

Report co-author, Steven Woolf, of Virginia Commonwealth University, said that the increasing deaths from suicide and substance abuse were “alarming” and that the decline in social mobility has made achieving the “American Dream” increasingly unfeasible, as many children can no longer expect a better future than their parents had achieved.

According to data from the World Bank cited in the report, average US life expectancy in 2016 was 78.6 years, compared to 78.7 years in 2015. The World Bank has not yet compiled life expectancy data for 2017.

Woolf said that while a 0.1-year decrease may not seem important, the significance was not the size of the decrease but the fact that the trend of increasing life expectancy in the US has ended.

US life expectancy is currently 1.5 years less than the average of members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Countries in the 35-member group include the UK, the Netherlands, Mexico, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, and Australia.