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Americans continue to die at a younger age, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed Thursday when it released its latest US mortality data for 2017.
According to the CDC, the average life expectancy in the United States in 2017 was 78.6 years, compared to 78.7 years in 2016.
The top 10 causes of death in America have not changed though – although the order of prevalence has sometimes changed. For example, in 2017, unintentional injuries (including drug overdoses) creaked after chronic lower respiratory diseases. This could provide more resources to the American plant that kills, researchers have called some of the leading causes of death, such as suicide, drug overdoses, diseases of "despair".
While heart disease and cancer continue to be by far the most likely causes of death in the United States, CDC data are disaggregated by sub-populations, so they give a more nuanced picture. America is killing some of its groups faster than others, including drug addicts and diabetics, but some groups are making gains. For example, cancer deaths are declining and age-adjusted mortality rates for non-Hispanic black women are lower.
This, however, does not hide a worrying historical trend. Since the 1960s, when the United States dominated the world in terms of life expectancy of nearly two and a half years, it has been slower than most other rich countries. That practically stopped in 2015, when the United States seems to have reached a plateau before starting to fall. It now ranks 29th among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in terms of life expectancy. Researchers writing The lancet predicted earlier this year that China will overtake the United States in terms of life expectancy by 2040.
While the changes may seem small, Bob Anderson, head of the mortality statistics branch of CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, told the the Wall Street newspaper, "In terms of human cost, you have a life that is not lived."
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