U.S. life expectancy rose significantly last year, hitting highest level since pandemic
The Summary
- U.S. life expectancy jumped to 78.4 years last year, the highest it has been since 2019, before the pandemic.
- A decline in Covid deaths was a primary factor in the upward trend. Covid fell from the fourth-leading cause of death in 2022 to the 10th in 2023.
- Drug overdose deaths also decreased last year.
U.S. life expectancy rose last year, hitting its highest level since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report, released Thursday, found that life expectancy at birth was 78.4 years in 2023. That’s a significant rise — nearly a full year — from the life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022.
“The increase we had this year — the 0.9 year — that’s unheard of prior to the pandemic,” said Ken Kochanek, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics who co-authored the report.
“Life expectancy in the United States never goes up or down any more than one- or two-tenths,” he said. “But then when Covid happened, you had this gigantic drop, and now we have a gigantic drop in Covid. So, you have this gigantic increase in life expectancy.”
From 2019 to 2021, U.S. life expectancy dropped from 78.8 years to 76.4.
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