FILE IMAGE - Visitors wait in line to take a tour bus in midtown New York on Dec. 5, 2021. (Photo by KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images) WASHINGTON - Life expectancy in the United States continued to decline in 2021 despite the availability of life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new analysis.The findings, published this week on the preprint server medRxiv — meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed — analyzed provisional government statistics.
The researchers predicted that life expectancy dropped again, from 76.99 years in 2020 to 76.60 years in 2021.In 2020, U.S. life expectancy had the largest one-year decline since World War II, falling from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.99 years in the first year of the pandemic.
The authors of the new findings noted how life expectancy dropped 2.26 years overall between 2019, the year before the COVID-19 crisis, and 2021.Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live.
It’s an important statistical snapshot of a country’s health that can be influenced both by sustained trends such as obesity, as well as more temporary threats like pandemics or war that might not endanger those newborns in their lifetimes.For decades, U.S.