US Life Expectancy Rises
US life expectancy rises due to a decline in leading causes of death and drug overdose
In a surprising recent data, the United States has good news. The US citizens have seen an increase in their life expectancy based on the data for 4 years. Prominently, the reason for this is the drug overdose and cancer deaths decline in the nation.
The claim came on the surface in light of the two government reports, i.e., US Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics. The decline in data medicine overdose has resulted in this remarkable outcome for US citizens. Moreover, reports have observed a decline in the number of deaths due to the leading causes of death. US citizens have been reported to have a decline in six out of ten leading causes of deaths over the years.
Facts about life expectancy in the United States show that it was 78.7 years in 2018 that reflected a slight increase of 0.1 years in comparison with 78.6 years in 2017. The country has a record US life expectancy of 78.9 years that was reported in 2014.
It has been interesting to find out how they have measured an increase in US life expectancy. Data on fatalities due to drug overdose shows that there were 67,367 deaths in 2018 as compared to 70,237 deaths in 2017 because of it. This drop of 4.1 percent reflects the increase in US life expectancy. However, drug overdose is still second as the cause of deaths of US citizens as cancer is responsible for most of the deaths.
Thus, drug overdose comes in second place. However, common property between the two is that the number of affected persons due to both of these reasons has gone down. There are less death and more life opportunities that have slightly increased the life expectancy in the US.
What is killing US citizens?
The latest mortality report takes data from the National Vital Statistics System to rank the top ten causes of deaths in 2018. These leading causes of deaths were similar to those in 2017. Heart disease tops the list, followed by cancer and injuries unintentionally. Other leading diseases killing US citizens are chronic lower respiratory diseases at fourth number, stroke is present in fifth place, Alzheimer’s disease stands at sixth in the list, diabetes is on the seventh rank, and influenza and pneumonia are the eighth leading cause of death in the US. The last two causes are diseases caused by kidney and suicide.
Reason of Increase (US life expectancy) due to decline (leading causes of death)
It has been noted earlier that fatal overdose and six of the leading causes of death have declined. Here are figures for their decline. As compared to data in 2017, death rate declined for heart disease by 0.8 percent, a decline by 2.2 percent for cancer, a decline of 2.8 percent for unintentional injuries, a decline of 2.9 percent for chronic lower respiratory diseases, a decline of 1.3 percent for stroke, and a decline of 1.6 percent for Alzheimer’s disease. The decline in these leading causes of deaths has reflected in an increase in the life expectancy of US citizens.