Why is life expectancy of USA men today so low?

How US life expectancy fell off a cliff
One factor explains why a gulf has opened between America and its wealthy peers: deaths from drug overdoses

ft.com

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

Open link

"Two decades ago, people in the US enjoyed reasonably long lives, comparable to most peer countries. An American girl born in 1990 could expect to live almost 79 years if mortality rates remained as they were then, giving her the best part of a year longer than her contemporaries born in England and Wales, Germany and Denmark.
While the picture was slightly less rosy for her brother, he would live to 72 on average, roughly neck-and-neck with the same cohort in western Europe. In the two decades since then, something — or some things, to be more precise — have gone very wrong.
As recently as 10 years ago, you might have struggled to pick the US out of the pack on a chart of life expectancy, but today that task could scarcely be easier. If we put aside the grim mortality shock of the past two years for a moment, the pattern is stark: a flock of developed countries streaks up and to the right, and then one solitary line slows, falters, and begins falling back to earth.
A yawning gulf has since opened up. On the eve of the pandemic, the average US baby boy was expected to live almost four years fewer than the average child born in similarly wealthy countries. Even its crisis-racked cousin across the Atlantic puts it to shame. The life expectancy at birth for a male child born in the US in 2019 was 76.1 years, the same as a boy born in England in 2001.
Dig beneath the surface, and the driving factors are clear. By stripping out deaths from specific causes in all countries, I have created a series of counterfactuals for how life expectancy would have evolved, both in the US and elsewhere, if certain factors were absent.

Some influence the level — if we equalise rates of obesity in all countries, the US deficit by 2019 shrinks from 3.6 years to 2.2 — but the shape remains unchanged, with male life expectancy still arcing downwards. There is only one factor on which the blame can be pinned for the recent reversal: deaths from drug overdoses.
By my calculations, the opioid epidemic has thus far wiped off the best part of a year from US male life expectancy at birth, and the vertiginous climb in new drug-related deaths during the pandemic will only have accelerated this trend.

There are several other areas that, if addressed, could also narrow the gap between the US and the rest — gun deaths (both homicide and suicide) and elevated rates of road accidents account for an additional 9 and 6 lost months respectively, relative to peer countries. But these gaps have remained stubbornly large for decades now.
Governments and businesses threw their biggest brains and untold billions at battling the pandemic over the past two years. Those efforts saved countless lives and should continue to provide downward pressure on the toll Covid exacts. The lack of imagination and resources being shown in facing up to the rapid emergence of a huge new drag on mortality is alarming."

Why don't you the ask the 75 year olds - who have, on average, 11+ years of life remaining... if they would rather just die now?

What completely empty argument.

Watch any documentary about the opioid epidemic and you will see how horrible the issue is. The worst part about it is that these drugs that are killing people are being pushed purely for profit. Pharmaceutical companies are lining the pockets of doctors to prescribe these addictive and dangerous drugs.

It's also labs in northern Mexico making fentanyl from the supplies in China

If you eat right, exercise right and sleep right you can eliminate cancer? Brilliant insight brooks

Longer life is the byproduct of being healthy for your whole life. Focus your effort and measurements on your current health. Longer life will take care of itself.

Simple and 100% true.

You are unlikely to get cancer if you eat right, exercise right and sleep right. That's a medical fact.

200 YEARS ago life expectancy was 29. Were at 2.5 times that now and your questioning it?

“Eliminate”

Right on. You want to know why people in Ohio (just using Ohio as the example) are so mad? It's their kids who go off to fight unjustified wars. It's their kids who were pushed into opiods. It's their kids who lack education and access to good jobs, so they drink the days away. It's their kids, who if they do get a job, it's a horrible dangerous job with no protections where they can be fired at any time for any reason. It's their kids who turn to crime because there is nothing else. It's their kids growing up in polluted well after the factories are gone. They're watching whole generations get sick and die. Those people have every right to be angry. While I disagree with how they vote, they know no matter who they vote for nothing will really change, so why not blow the whole thing up. It makes me sad. We could solve every one of these problems but the government no longer represents the interests of the people, but rather business.

-An entire national economy structured by and for the benefit of oligarchs.

-An entire work force turned into glorified hourly wage slave 'gig' workers and casuals.

-Almost NO pensions available to the work force anymore. Social security and Medicare under constant threat by one of two national political parties.

-Slim benefits at most work places, including increasingly severe 'health plans' that require many thousands of dollars out of pocket before plans cover anything at all.

-NO universal healthcare.

-Meager social safety net benefits, recipients of which are ostracized endlessly.

-Constant propaganda push about the myth of 'freedom' and 'rugged indivualism', which are nothing more than euphemisms pushed by the oligarchs that essentially mean, "I am free to exploit you and you are free to drop dead".

-One of two national parties captured by anti-science, anti-democracy, anti-public health interests that gravely exacerbated a global pandemic.

-A society that allows its citizens to fall to the point of massive homelessness and despair, in front of our very eyes. Remember, any American outside the top .5% can, in the wake of one personal disaster, find themselves perilously close to homelessness.

America's failure to reign in unfettered oligarchic takeover has created a country in which the fabulously wealthy have it ALL, and all the rest of us can drop dead. That is why Americans not only live less long, but with decreased happiness and lower quality of life than other western industrialized countries.

We can’t really forget about lifespan unless you are fine being healthy and dropping dead in your fifties. Lifespan indicates societal support for longevity, including accident prevention, peace, minimizing job casualties, infectious diseases, stress, and many other factors that could cause a healthy person — a person with no obvious physiological ailments — to die early.

Longevity implies a baseline level of health but the converse is not true.

Certain demographic groups drag down the average. 95% of you reading this will live well into your 80s, 90s, or even beyond.

Source?

Cars have become exponentially safer over the last fifty years. But instead of enjoying these safety gains, we now drive 6,000lb "pickup trucks" faster, drunker, and more distracted, and so deaths have gone back up.

Food has become drastically cheaper over the last 50-100 years even with recent inflation, and poor people now get food stamps and other benefits. So it should be easy for everyone to eat nutritious, well-balanced diets... but instead we just eat more and crappier food.

Medicine has also made great strides in the last 50-100 years... but too many of us avoid routine care and lifesaving vaccines and instead get our medical info from quacks on the internet.

Smoking has declined drastically thanks to public health efforts... but instead of dying after decades of smoking, we're dying in minutes after using fentanyl.

Social media should theoretically make it easier to find and keep in touch with friends... but in practice it divides us and makes us depressed.

I guess the lesson is you can't help human nature. But for those of us who eat well, exercise, drive safe, socialize, don't abuse substances, and take advantage of modern healthcare, your personal life expectancy continues to go up.

Yeah that was true like 10 yrs ago. now good luck trying to get opioids from anywhere but a pill mill (most were shut down)or possibly a pain specialist, even if you have legitimate chronic pain.

Opioid deaths currently are much more like due to illicits, heroin and fentanyl. You can’t blame pharma and doctors for that right? or can you? at what point do people have to be held responsible for their choices, and for dealing w pain and adversity in a healthy way? Once you get on opioids, your brain chemistry changes permanently. all the rehab and interventions in the world and many people still can’t/won’t be cured

going back the original point, obesity is also somewhat to blame, not just for life expectancy, but rising disability and healthcare costs

You talking about fatties, junkies, or low-income groups?

while there are some valid points, overall gross oversimplification, like something you would Read in The NY Times. You don’t need much money to live frugally and retire. if you have 5 kids that’s your problem, if you buy an F150 w a loan, and a massive house, and take expensive trips, that’s your problem. You should be saving it instead. Veggies are still cheap. where i live you can still buy a modest house for under 300k if you want to…but nobody does

Disease happens even to those who have a healthy lifestyle.