Fall of life expectancy of the Americans due to 10 causes.
A new report published by National Center for Health Statistics has all reasons to worry for Americans as it found that there has been a decrease in the life expectancy of Americans – the worst since more than two decades.
According to the report, the main reason for the decrease in the life expectancy is the increase in of health problems among the youth and middle age people. The increasing number of Americans dying due to heart diseases, diabetic, drug overdose accidents and other conditions have increased in the last few years causing the death rates to increase, says the report.
National Center for Health has also found 10 leading causes of death that culminated in the fall of life expectancy of the Americans.
Washington Post quoted Princeton economist Anne Case saying “I think we should be very concerned.” The case also suggested that there should be thorough research in understanding the reason for the increase in the number of deaths caused due to heart diseases, which is the No.1 killer in the United States.It was a year before that Case and his coresearcher Angus Deaton brought to the attention of the people about the unusual increase in the mortality rate. They had cited overdoses, alcoholism, and suicide as the main reason for the rise in the mortality rate.
According to the report, the overall life expectancy of Americans fell by one-tenth of a year, from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.8 in 2015. This is the first time since 1993 when it dropped from 75.6 to 75.4 that America has witnessed such a decrease in the life expectancy, says World Bank data.
On the other hand, the death rate of Americans rose proportionally with the number increasing 1.2% in 2015, first time ever since 1999. According to the world bank data, more than 2.7 million Americans died out of which a staggering 45% of them died due to heart complications.
On the flipside, some experts are of the opinion that a single year’s data cannot be used to interpret a trend
“This is unusual, and we don’t know what happened,” said Jiaquan Xu, an epidemiologist and lead author of the study. “So many leading causes of death increased.”
On the positive side, the report has found that the death caused due to cancer has dropped considerably in 2015 and they attribute this to the fewer number of people smoking and the early cancer detecting systems.
What is disturbing is the jump of deaths caused due to Alzheimer’s disease which increased from 25.4 to 29.4 deaths per 100,000 people.
The report says, male Americans could expect to live 76.3 years at birth last year, down from 76.5 in 2014. Females could expect to live to 81.2 years, down from 81.3 the previous year.
Heart disease was responsible for more than 633,000 deaths in 2015, up from a little more than 614,000 the previous year. Cancer killed more than 595,000 people.
“We’re seeing the ramifications of the increase in obesity,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “And we’re seeing that in an increase in heart disease.”
Deaths caused by accidents, orverdosage, alcohol and other chemicals also went high in 2015 with a total of 146,000 death in 2015 from 136,000 in 2014.
Deaths from suicide is the the 10th-leading cause of death in the United States, and it rose to 44,193 from 42,773 in 2014.
“Mortality rates in middle age have totally flatlined in the U.S. for people in their 30s and 40s and 50s, or have been increasing,” Case said. “What we really need to do is find out why we have stopped making progress against heart disease. And I don’t have the answer to that.”
Key findings
Data from the National Vital Statistics System, Mortality
- Life expectancy for the U.S. population in 2015 was 78.8 years, a decrease of 0.1 year from 2014.
- The age-adjusted death rate increased 1.2% from 724.6 deaths per 100,000 standard population in 2014 to 733.1 in 2015.
- The 10 leading causes of death in 2015 remained the same as in 2014. Age-adjusted death rates increased for eight leading causes and decreased for one.
- The infant mortality rate of 589.5 infant deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015 was not significantly different from the 2014 rate.
- The 10 leading causes of infant death in 2015 remained the same as in 2014, although two causes exchanged ranks.