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The United States' life expectancy has fallen for two consecutive years, the first in over half of a century, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
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Death rates among black men climbed 1 percent in 2016, while death rates among white women fell by the same margin. Death rates among black women, white men, and Hispanic men and women did not experience much change.
“This was the first time life expectancy in the U.S. has declined two years in a row since declines in 1962 and 1963,” the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) confirmed in a statement.
The life expectancy of people born in the United States in 2016 dropped to 78.6 years on average from 78.7 years. The report found that death rates per 100,000 people rose among young adults.
“The new report shows the decline in life expectancy occurred despite an overall decline in U.S. mortality,” the statement added.
Heart disease is the number one killer, followed by cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide.
“Unintentional Injuries” is a miscellaneous category that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the NCHS include car accidents, falls, accidental firearm deaths, and most, but not all, drug overdoses under the umbrella term.
The CDC report found that an estimated 63,600 people died of drug overdoses, in 2016. Two-thirds of those deaths were caused by opioids. Adults between the ages of 25 and 54 had the highest rate of drug overdose death.
"I'm not prone to dramatic statements," Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told NPR.
Between 2015 and 2016, the United States saw a 28 percent increase in fatal opioid overdoses. Approximately 33,000 of the 52,400 deaths attributed to overdoses, in 2015, involved opioids. While opioids accounted for 42,249 of 63,000 people died of drug overdose in 2016.
Last year, opioids killed more people than car crashes (about 37,400), guns (about 38,000) or breast cancer (about 40,000).
"The drug overdose problem is a public health problem and it needs to be addressed. We need to get a handle on it," Anderson said.
Overdose death rates climbed about 10 percent per year between 1999 and 2006 before dropping to about 3 percent increase per year between 2006 and 2014. But then it jumped significantly to 18 percent each year in 2015 and 2016.
White House Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 was about $504 billion, roughly 3 percent of the GDP.
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