Tag: US life expectancy falls

NOVANEWS By Emily Hannon New data from the National Center for Health Statistics has found that life expectancy in the United States for 2015 has fallen for the first time in over two decades. One of the most alarming aspects of the fall is that it has no obvious, singular cause. Unlike the three other drops we’ve had in the past 40 years, which were caused by diseases such as influenza (in 1979 and 1992) or AIDs (in 1993), the current drop is much more perplexing. Life expectancy growth has slowed in the U.S. since the 1980s and is now “backsliding,” according to Samuel Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania – even though improvements in medicine and medical research has marched on. Meanwhile, life expectancy increased in Europe this year. Death rates due to heart...