Fresh data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics suggests U.S. life expectancy is climbing for the first time since 2014—but heart disease remains the number-one threat to mortality in the country.
The January report, written by Jiaquan Xu, MD, and colleagues, details the CDC’s finalized mortality statistics through 2018. At that point in time, life expectancy at birth in the United States was 78.7 years—a 0.1-point increase from 2017, when life expectancy was 78.6 years.
Xu et al. said the 0.1-year increase in life expectancy the team noted in 2018 was likely due to significant decreases in mortality from cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases and heart disease. The last time U.S. life expectancy was on the rise was between 2010 and 2014, when it increased by 0.2 years on average. It declined between 2014 and 2017 following the widespread damage of the opioid epidemic, and while a 0.1-point increase in 2018 helped boost those numbers, national life expectancy still lagged 0.2 years below the peak expectancy observed in 2014.
Life expectancy increased similarly between the sexes between 2017 and 2018, with men experiencing a jump from 76.1 years in 2017 to 76.2 years in 2018 and women seeing an increase from 81.1 to 81.2 years, respectively. Females have consistently lived longer than males; the difference in life expectancy between women and men was five years in both 2018 and 2017.
The age-adjusted death rate in the U.S. decreased by 1.1% between 2017 and 2018, from 731.9 deaths per 100,000 standard population in 2017 to 723.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2018. During the two-year period, age-specific death rates fell for people aged 15-24, 25-34, 45-54, 65-74, 75-84 and 85 and up.
The 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. were the same in 2018 as they were in 2017, topped by heart disease and cancer. Unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide followed suit.
Xu and colleagues said around 73.8% of all deaths in the U.S. in 2018 could be attributed to at least one of the top 10 leading causes of death that year. Between 2017 and 2018, age-adjusted death rates decreased by 0.8% for heart disease, 2.2% for cancer, 2.8% for unintentional injuries, 2.9% for chronic lower respiratory diseases, 1.3% for stroke and 1.6% for Alzheimer's disease. It’s not all good news, though—death rates increased by 4.2% for flu and pneumonia and by 1.4% for suicide.
Leading causes of death also remained uniform among children between 2017 and 2018, though infant mortality rate decreased 2.3% over the two-year period, from 579.3 infant deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017 to 566.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018.
Find the CDC’s full report online here.
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.