People die every single day — it is inevitable. Some people, unfortunately, die so young either because of a certain illness or a tragic accident. There are also some who are lucky enough to grow old and are just waiting to die because it will happen eventually. However, a recent statistics was released wherein it was revealed that the life expectancy in the United States has dropped yet again, this is the second consecutive year that it has fallen.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) it is very important to measure the life expectancy in every nation so that they will be able to determine the causes and take immediate action about it, continue reading to find out more.
What Is Life Expectancy and How Is It Measured?
The World Health Organization says that life expectancy basically means that they are averaging the number of years of a person and determine how long they will be able to live while living healthy.
To be able to analyze and estimate these life tables, every nation must annually report their death registration data to the World Health Organization. This is where the Global Burden of Disease, Multi-Country Survey Study, and World Health Survey, who are all under WHO, are the ones responsible for estimating the date from more than 70 countries.
Every nation is able to do their own statistics when it comes to life expectancy as long as they have enough data to conduct the study. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or the OECD, who is composed of researchers from developed countries found that the life expectancy for people in the United States is 78.7 years, which is lower than other nation’s life expectancy which is 80.3 years.
What’s To Blame For United States’ Life Expectancy Dropping
The CDC’s National Center for Health released a new report wherein it was revealed that for the very first time since the 1960s, the life expectancy in the United States has managed to drop, and this is for the second consecutive time.
The last time this happened was around 1962 and 1963, where the influenza outbreak basically caused hundreds of people to die. According to Ellen Meara, who is a professor at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, the best life expectancy of the people in the United States was back in the 1980s, however, the life expectancy of other nations seem to be getting higher over time, unlike the U.S. who has either drops or stays the same.
She also mentioned in an interview with CNN, how people need to look at what people from the 80’s are doing differently compared to what people from today are doing.
Drug Overdose
Most experts agree on one thing, and that is the different lifestyle that the American nation has today. Drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and suicide are some of the leading causes of deaths in the United States, the statistics keep on getting higher so experts say that it is not surprising that the life expectancy would drop yet again. Dr. Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University, who is actually one of the authors of the study, said that one of the major reasons is that people simply continue to get into drug addiction.
This has been confirmed by the Food and Drug Administration and the cases have been increasing over the past couple of years. People who die from drug overdose are getting younger and younger as the years go by. It actually has managed to kill more people than HIV, gun violence, and cancer did.
It is considered as the leading cause of death for people in the United States who are under the age of 50 years old. In 2016 alone, more than 60,000 people died from drug overdose. This is despite how the government is trying their best to get rid of the opioid crisis by actually improving their emergency responses and of course providing rehabilitation treatment.
Alcohol Abuse
Aside from drug addiction, alcohol is also considered as one of the major reasons why more and more people are dying early. This is according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, wherein they have found that more than 80,000 people have died from alcohol-related causes almost every single yesterday.
The World Health Organization even reported that one of the causes are injuries and accidents because of alcohol as well as diseases from alcohol abuse such as cancer and liver cirrhosis.
The American Foundation for Suicide said that more than $69 billion is spent every year for suicide because people ages from 20-50 have been taking away their own lives due to severe stress, depression, and other mental health illnesses. One of the things that they are doing to prevent this is to promote mental health assistance to the nation.