America’s Early-Death Rate was an Outlier Pre-Pandemic

July 25, 2022

The US has hit been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, experiencing the worst outbreak of all wealthy industrialized nations. This has resulted in a dramatic spike in early deaths. Unfortunately, this is only the exacerbation of a pre-existing trend. Researchers using a data from the CDC and an international mortality database found that the US began falling behind Japan and 16 nations in western Europe as early as the 1980’s, with over 600,000 early deaths in 2019 alone.

According to Ed Yong, “Several studies, for example, have shown that America’s life expectancy has tailed behind other comparable countries since the 1970s. By 2010, that gap was already 1.9 years. By the end of 2021, it had grown to 5.3. And although many countries took a longevity hit because of COVID, America was once again exceptional: Among its peers, it experienced the largest life-expectancy decline in 2020 and, unlike its peers, continued declining in 2021.”

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