The (Surprisingly) Good News on Life Expectancy—It’s Still Going Up
12/18/23 at 04:00 AM
The (Surprisingly) Good News on Life Expectancy—It’s Still Going Up
Wall Street Journal
December 15, 2023
Over the past decade a number of alarming stories have chronicled the decline of U.S. life expectancy in the midst of rising overdose deaths, Covid-19, alcohol-related deaths and suicides. It turns out there are two ways to measure mortality and life expectancy, and the one you hear about the most paints a misleadingly pessimistic picture of the future. Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said life expectancy, which hit a 25-year low in 2021, climbed to 74.8 years for men and 80.2 for women in 2022, but those were still well below prepandemic levels.