Dec. 6. 2024 – Life expectancy in the United States is improving a little, but not as much as that of many other high-income and some middle-income nations, a new study says.
U.S. life expectancy is expected to go from 78.3 years in 2022, to 79.9 years in 2035, to 80.4 years in 2050, according to forecasting models from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
But the U.S. is not keeping pace with peer nations. The U.S.’s global ranking in life expectancy is expected to drop from 49th in 2022 to 66th in 2050, said an analysis published in The Lancet.
The modest increase in life expectancy is caused by a decline in mortality rates, including a drop in heart attack, stroke, and diabetes deaths rates. But American mortality is challenged by public health problems such as drug overdose deaths and obesity, the report said.
“In spite of modest increases in life expectancy overall, our models forecast health improvements slowing down due to rising rates of obesity, which is a serious risk factor to many chronic diseases and forecasted to leap to levels never before seen,” co-senior author Christopher J.L. Murray, MD, a professor and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said in a news release. “The rise in obesity and overweight rates in the U.S., with IHME forecasting over 260 million people affected by 2025, signals a public health crisis of unimaginable scale.”
Women fare worse than men in the life expectancy forecast. The study predicts that life expectancy for U.S. women will drop from 51st in 2022 to 74th in 2050. For U.S. men, the life expectancy will drop from 51st to 65th over that time span.
The researchers said that increasing access to preventive health care for all Americans could help increase the nation’s life expectancy. If risk factors such as obesity, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure were eliminated by 2050, 12.4 million deaths could be averted in the U.S., the study said.
