Robert Brown|Average US life expectancy increases by more than one year, but not to pre-pandemic levels

Life expectancy in the U.S. increased by more than a year in 2022,Robert Brown but it still has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, according to newly released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

U.S. life expectancy was 77.5 years, researchers found, up 1.1 years from 2021. The increase did not overcome a loss of 2.4 years in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, which has largely been attributed to excess deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic.

CDC researchers said the decline in deaths from the virus alone accounted for approximately 84% of the increase in life expectancy.

While the increase in life expectancy is "welcome news," the average nationwide far below that of other high-income countries that have largely recovered from the pandemic, said Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

"Although this is a positive change and heading in the right direction, we still have a ways to go," he said.

The share of deaths related to the virus has continued to drop since 2020 when it was the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. In 2022, it was the fourth leading cause trailing behind deaths caused by unintentional injury, largely driven by drug overdoses, according to the CDC's provisional data.

The rise in overdose deaths from 2019 to 2021 was driven by the ongoing opioid epidemic which includes deaths caused by prescription and synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl. Deaths from opioid overdoses shot up by more than 26,000 between 2010 and 2017, and again by nearly 12,000 between 2020 and 2021, according to the NIH.

Suicides also rose to the highest age-adjusted rate last year since 1941, and increased 3% since 2021, the CDC found. Researchers said the increase in life expectancy can also be attributed to decreases in deaths caused by heart disease and homicide.

Women's life expectancy in the U.S. remained higher than men's in 2022 by 5.4 years. Women regained .9 years of their 2.1-year life expectancy loss, from 79.3 in 2021 to 80.2 in 2022, while men regained 1.3 years, from 73.5 to 74.8.

The difference increased during 2020 and 2021 to levels not seen since 1996 when women lived six years more.

The decline in COVID deaths also helped narrow the health disparity gap between white non-Hispanic life expectancy and other groups.

American Indian-Alaskan Native people saw the biggest increase in life expectancy from 65.6 in 2021 to 67.9 in 2022, regaining 2.3 years of their 6.2-year loss between 2019 and 2021. The Hispanic population saw the next biggest increase with a gain of 2.2 years, followed by Black people with a gain of 1.6 years.

The staggering gap of more than 11 years between the life expectancy for American Indians and Alaska Natives and white people in 2021 narrowed the most but remained 9.6 years apart. American Indian and Alaska Native people were 1.5 times more likely to catch COVID and twice as likely to die from it, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Black life expectancy also remains consistently lower than white life expectancy, but the discrepancy narrowed by 14.5%, or 0.8 years, from 2021 to 2022.

While the new data shows progress, it also shows how people of color were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the white population.

"It reflects the fact that there was more ground to cover for people of color because they had such devastating losses during the pandemic, particularly in 2020," Woolf said.

Average life expectancy rose steadily every year since the 1960s until 2012 when it reached a plateau of 77.7 for the first time.

In 2019, the number reached a high of 78.8 years before the pandemic struck, dropping the average by 1.5 years, a decline which has largely been attributed to the approximately 1.1 million deaths associated with the virus. Life expectancy in the U.S. has yet to return to its pre-pandemic level, which suggests COVID-19 and other causes of death exacerbated by the pandemic are still contributing to the death toll, Woolf said.

And U.S. life expectancy was not in a great place before the pandemic, either, he added. Systemic issues such as racism, poverty and limited access to healthcare continue to shorten Americans' lifespans.

"We spent a decade at the same life expectancy where other countries saw their longevity grow," he said. "Until we deal with those root causes, we’ll continue to lag behind other countries."