More young Americans dying in prime of life, research finds
Drug overdoses, alcohol abuse and suicide are among the causes of death increasingly striking working-age Americans.
Life expectancy in the United States is dropping, and young and middle-aged Americans are dying at higher rates over the past three decades.
“We’re losing more and more Americans in the prime of their lives, in their most productive years and in their parenting years,” said Kathleen Mullan Harris, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina.
Drug overdoses, alcohol abuse and suicide are among the causes of death increasingly striking working-age Americans during this period, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Cardiometabolic conditions, which include diabetes and heart diseases, are another major driver of the trend that Americans are more likely to die before age 65 than those who live in other rich nations.
Related: COVID-19 leads to largest single-year life expectancy decline in 40 years
“Beginning in 2010, progress in life expectancy stalled in the United States,” Harris said. ”Then between 2014 and 2017, life expectancy fell for three years in a row.”
This three-year decline was the largest sustained decline in life expectancy since the 1918 flu pandemic. The current pandemic has only exacerbated the underlying trends driving down life expectancy in working-age Americans, particularly in how disparities in health affect working-class communities and people of color.
The authors of the report offered a number of recommendations to address the increased death rates, including strengthening regulatory control of prescription drugs and improving access to substance abuse and mental health services. They argue that obesity prevention programs ought to begin early in life and target those most at risk, including racial and ethnic minorities, as well as women and those living in poverty.
“We also have to look upstream to what you might call the causes of the causes,” said Dr. Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. “What are the living conditions, what is it about life in America that is increasing the vulnerability of our communities, families, and individuals?”
The report recommends using the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid coverage in states that haven’t done so yet.
“Our committee reviewed the literature, showing that Medicaid expansion is associated with significantly better health outcomes,” Woolf said. “We really need to think about the economy and how it’s left certain communities that very vulnerable — for example, to the collapse of manufacturing jobs and mining jobs — how to adapt our social and economic policies in a way that not only rescue their economic circumstances but also improve their health.”
The report’s final conclusions call for engaging policymakers to dismantle structural racism and discriminatory policies in areas such as education, housing, lending, civic participation and criminal justice.
“It remains a priority for us to confront this as a nation and to pursue policies that will help us dismantle those historic policies and practices that have excluded so many from achieving their best possible health outcomes,” Woolf said.
Read more: