Rise in U.S. life expectancy is ‘good news,’ but gains aren’t enough to wipe out COVID losses

Life expectancy in the United States rose in 2022, the first increase since the COVID pandemic began, according to new federal data. But those gains were not enough to compensate for the years of life lost to the virus, which remains one of the nation’s top causes of death.

From birth, the average American can expect to live 77.5 years, according to preliminary 2022 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. That rise, based on information culled from death certificates, marked an increase of 1.1 years from the year before. Researchers found that fewer deaths linked to COVID buoyed much of the increase in U.S. life expectancy.

“That’s good news,” said Elizabeth Arias, a health scientist and statistician who co-authored the report released Wednesday. Fewer people also died from heart disease and accidental injuries, including drug overdose, than they did in 2021, Arias said.

Chart by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour

While suicide was not among the top 10 reasons why Americans died in 2022, it “has risen steadily” to its highest rate since 1941, and researchers observed those “increases pretty much across the board,” said Sally Curtin, a statistician who co-authored a separate report the CDC also released Wednesday. The nation’s all-time highest suicide rate was recorded in 1932 – during the throes of the Great Depression – but Curtin said these latest figures are sobering as they approach “unprecedented territory.”

But COVID is still the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., Arias said. And these gains weren’t enough to overcome the backslide in life expectancy – 2.4 years — since 2020 and the start of the pandemic.

These latest estimates offer a stark reminder of how much further the nation must go to recover from that crater of loss: Life expectancy is now “what it was 20 years ago,” Arias said.

MORE: Why mortality for young Americans is increasing at an alarming rate

Compared to other developed nations, the U.S. sits at the bottom when it comes to how long people live, said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist who directs Brown University’s Pandemic Center and a professor at Brown’s School of Public Health. That’s “unacceptable” and “embarrassing,” Nuzzo said.

“We have all of the resources to have a higher life expectancy, and we just have to commit ourselves to improving things,” she said.

While all groups saw increased life expectancy, racial and ethnic disparities endured, according to these latest estimates. For example, American Indian and Alaska Native individuals saw life expectancy rise to 67.9 years in 2022. That is still more than 16 years less than among Asian Americans and roughly a decade less than among white Americans.

READ MORE: COVID helped cause the biggest drop in U.S. life expectancy since WWII

Public health experts and leaders must pay attention to the systemic influences that shape racial and ethnic disparities in life expectancy, Nuzzo said, especially as people focus on improved estimates overall. Removing the pandemic as a major driver of life expectancy “still doesn’t put us on great footing among other countries,” she said.

Persistent increases in chronic illness, obesity and “all the other social vulnerabilities that made people more susceptible to being infected” with the coronavirus will continue to disproportionately drain years of life if ignored, especially among communities of color, Nuzzo said.

“Those are things we very much have to tackle because they will remain important contributors to depressed life expectancy in the U.S., and they are also going to be vulnerabilities for future pandemics,” she said.