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Here’s some news.
Life expectancy rose in the U.S. for the first time in four years in 2018, the CDC reported on Thursday, largely thanks to a drop in deaths from drug overdoses and cancer.
U.S. life expectancy reached 78.7 years in 2018, which is an increase of 0.1 years (about a month on average) compared to the life expectancy of 78.6 years in 2017. That means an infant born in 2018 is expected to live 78 years and eight months, factoring in current death trends and other issues. Despite the uptick, U.S. life expectancy is still lower compared to the peak of 78.9 years that Americans reached in 2014, however.
Broken down by gender, the life expectancy for a woman born in 2018 is 81 years and one month, while for men it’s about 76 years and two months.
The infant mortality rate dropped 2.3%, as well. And by age, death rates dropped 5.1% for people ages 15 to 24; 3% for people ages 25 to 34; 1.4% for ages 45 to 54; 0.4% for ages 65 to 74; 1.9% for ages 75 to 84; and 0.9% for ages 85 and older. Only adults ages 35 to 44 and 55 to 64 didn’t see significant changes.
And Americans who were 65 in 2018 are expected to live another 19 years and six months, on average.
The prognosis hasn’t been so positive over the last few years. U.S. life expectancy either fell or stayed flat between 2014 and 2017, which the CDC attributed to fatal drug overdoses and suicide deaths.
Indeed, more than 42,000 people died of opioid overdoses accounted in 2016, which was more than any previous year on record, and leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency. President Trump donated his third-quarter $100,000 salary last year to help tackle the opioid epidemic.
But the death rate from fatal drug overdoses dropped 4.1% in 2018 to about 67,400, according to the new CDC data — the first decline in drug deaths in 28 years.
The modest gain over a single year doesn’t necessarily signify a trend, however, so health officials were cautiously optimistic. “Let’s just hope it continues,” said Dr. Robert Anderson, who oversees the CDC report, told the Associated Press.
Related: Opioids only partly explain America’s ‘deaths of despair’
Even more importantly, the rate of cancer deaths dropped by more than 2% for the second year in a row, particularly lung cancer deaths, which represented 30% of the life expectancy gain. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the country after heart disease, with about 600,000 Americans dying from cancer every year.
Read more: Cancer rates in U.S. see largest drop on record
What’s more, six of the 10 leading causes of death also declined, including heart disease (dropping 0.8%), cancer (-2.2%), unintentional injuries (-2.8%), chronic lower respiratory diseases (-2.9%), stroke (-1.3%) and Alzheimer’s disease (-1.6%).
It’s not all good news, however.
The number of people dying from the flu, pneumonia and suicide increased. Influenza and pneumonia deaths jumped 4.2%, while suicide rates rose 1.4% to hit its highest level since 1941, with about 14 suicide deaths per 100,000 people. The suicide rate among young Americans has been on the rise, soaring 56% among those ages 10 to 24 between 2007 and 2017.
Read more: Suicide rate among young Americans soars by more than 50% over 10 years
And more than 2.8 million Americans died in 2018 from all causes of death, the CDC noted, which was about 26,000 more than the year before. So why did the numbers of deaths go up while the death rate went down? Because the U.S. population is growing, and a large swath consists of retirement-age baby boomers.
