US Life Expectancy Falls For Second Straight Year

NBC News reports:

Life expectancy in the United States fell for the second year in a row in 2016 — and it’s clear the epidemic of drug overdoses is at least in part to blame, government researchers said Thursday.

Overall life expectancy for a baby born in 2016 fell to 78.6 years, a small decline of 0.1 percent, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) team found. At the same time, mortality from drug overdoses rose by 21 percent.

Life expectancy is affected by mortality rates, but life expectancy calculations are forward-looking projections, while mortality rates are based on current factors.

The number of people who died — not the rate — went up in 2016, however. More than 2.7 million people died in the U.S. in 2016, with a total of 31,618 more deaths than in 2015.