U.S. life expectancy hits all-time high

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-life-expectancy-hits-all-time-high/

by brandonb • 6 months ago

40 122 6 months ago

drsalt2• 6 months ago

There are many different populations in the USA. How useful is the overall life expectancy average? What decision can I make with this information?

readthenotes1• 6 months ago

It's bad news for social security and Medicare.

The men vs women numbers otherwise are pretty useless for the reason you gave

mmooss7• 6 months ago

The significance is obvious: People in the US are getting healthier, by a significant metric. That doesn't matter? The US is a relativley well-defined group, sharing many inputs and consuming many of the same resources, including the same national health care resources for research, care, regulation, etc.

There are many different populations in the USA.

Are you saying only your 'population' matters to you?

What do you mean by it exactly? There are lots of populations everywhere, and every population can be broken down into more populations. Any aggregate number won't describe you as an individual, even if it's a number for your own family.

Is this just a repeat of the old racial trope here?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843222

drsalt2• 6 months ago

no, i think you're imagining a lot of things. i'm just saying it is very coarse metric by which to understand anything at all. But, I'm not in any way educated in this metric so i'm open to anyone telling me how it is useful, like I asked initially.

N_Lens• 6 months ago

Yet still lower than other developed nations, especially considering the exorbitant expenditure (per capita) on healthcare.

0xy• 6 months ago

Impossible to compare without controlling for demographics. White people in the US have comparable rates to Europe.

Diversity means diversity in health outcomes, which are vastly different between groups.

Maxatar2• 6 months ago

White people in the US have comparable rates to Europe.

No it's not. White non Hispanic population in the U.S. has a life expectancy of 77.5, which is lower than the U.S. average life expectancy and comparable to Eastern Europe, but not Europe as a whole (life expectancy of 81.4).

mmooss7• 6 months ago

That needs clear causal evidence that race somehow causes health outcomes, otherwise there's nothing distinguishing it from the old racial prejudice - now including blaming the victim:

There is a lot of evidence of a causal relationship between being non-white and having less access to healthcare, nutrition, and other things that affect health outcomes, and that evidence aligns well with being targets of racial discrimination.

When we just repeat baseless claims about race, we risk perpetuating it.

I've never seen evidence of a racial difference in accessing health care that is accessible. It's hard to believe skin color would affect that, while it's easy to believe (and witness) that it affects what you have access to.

aeternum2• 6 months ago

If you exclude obese individuals US life expectancy is quite high. Health is the ultimate marginal good so exorbitant expenditure is relatively logical. You can't take the money with you so it often makes sense to spend on health even assuming extreme diminishing returns.

464931684• 6 months ago

If you exclude obese individuals

The obesity rate in the US is 40%. The just-overweight rate is 33%. So unless we really ramp up on tackling obesity, the life expectancy is going be dragged down.

Maxatar2• 6 months ago

Yes, if you exclude about half of the U.S. population (40% of Americans are obese) [1] then the U.S. has life expectancy that is on par with the rest of the developed world.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm

skissane• 6 months ago

US obesity rates are around 40% of population. Australia, Canada, UK, it is around 30% of population. Canadian life expectancy is 3-4 years higher on average. UK around 3 years higher on average. Australia around 4-5 years higher

Does the gap in obesity rates fully explain the difference in life expectancy? Or are there other factors at play?

I don't think it actually does, because UK has lower obesity rates than Australia (26-29% versus 32%), yet also lower life expectancy (Australia is 81.1 male, 85.1 female; UK is 78.8 male, 82.8 female)

tempodox• 6 months ago

Only if you’re rich. While the non-rich can’t afford health care.

rayiner8• 6 months ago

It’s not clear that healthcare has much to do with life expectancy. The group with the lowest access to healthcare and highest rate of lacking insurance, hispanics, also have the second highest life expectancy.

Lifestyle seems to play a huge role in life expectancy. Mormons live 10 years longer than white Americans generally: https://www.deseret.com/2010/4/13/20375744/ucla-study-proves.... That’s a huge difference—it dwarfs the 2.5 years difference between men in the U.S. and men in the UK.

hackeraccount2• 6 months ago

I strongly agree with this. Those GLP-1 drugs make me wonder just a bit.

userbinator• 6 months ago

I've always found the numbers in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... rather interesting, because of how different the cultures and living conditions are even among the top countries. Hong Kong and Japan are always around the top, but so are Switzerland and Australia.

defrost• 6 months ago

Australia has

* food standards for shops and franchises .. McDonalds here has better salads that in the US,

* sport and activity as a fundemental part of most lives,

* good health care for all, even for "bottom tier" unemployed, with hybrid public/private health insurance and literal walk in, fall over, free heart surgery and follow up (for those that cannot pay).

Stats wise, higher life expectancy and better cancer survival rates*

* Yes, better, but not by much .. just cheaper and across the demographics.

cthalupa6• 6 months ago

We have a huge amount of data around physical size being inversely correlated with lifespan. The bigger you are, no matter what drives it - height, muscle mass, body fat, etc. - the lower your life expectancy is.

Obviously lots of other factors, but it does help explain part of why we see much of the most developed portions of Asia at the top of the list.

Switzerland is an interesting counterpoint, though - average height there is taller than most of Europe - though their obesity rates are about half of that of the European average.

eudamoniac3• 6 months ago

This is incorrect re muscle mass. Muscle mass is one of the best indicators of longevity.

mullingitover4• 6 months ago

It says a lot that the US isn’t beating poverty-stricken Cuba on this metric, considering the eye-watering prices that are extorted from patients.

coliveira• 6 months ago

The current admin is doing everything they can to stop this trend, but by making life worse in the island, as they don't want to do anything about the health of US citizens.

thomassmith657• 6 months ago

The healthcare system is one of the few things in Cuba that isn't dysfunctional. It's said to be excellent.

ch4s313• 6 months ago

It's said to be excellent

This is laughably untrue.[1][2][3] They're lacked basic supplies for 30 years. Frequent blackouts also complicate or prevent many types of care.

[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250709-bitter-pill-c...

[2] https://cuba.miami.edu/business-economy/a-close-look-at-cuba...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba

trhway3• 6 months ago

Just another datapoint - the infant mortality is 5.6 US vs. 6.5 Cuba and under five mortality is 6.5 vs. 8.3.

mullingitover4• 6 months ago

If we're going to compare datapoints:

Alabama: 7.1

Mississippi: 9.7

Louisiana: 7.1

Arkansas: 8.2

There are a lot of other states that are bringing up the average, in many ways the US is a bunch of third world countries in a trenchcoat.

hackeraccount2• 6 months ago

I've read that infant mortality is a sketchy stat.

pinkmuffinere3• 6 months ago

Is this not just because Covid killed off many of the weakest individuals? I suspect we just traded deaths in 2021 for deaths in 2025, making this latest data look better, without fundamental improvement. Not to say with confidence that _no_ improvement has been made, but that I think the stats for _this one year_ are probably not very meaningful. Maybe I misunderstood something though?

thesmtsolver2• 6 months ago

No, not just weeding out due to Covid.

If that was the case, you won't see death rates decrease across multiple groups and not just the weakest groups.

Death rates declined across all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men and women.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/publichealth...

It's the result of not only the dissipation of the COVID-19 pandemicopens in a new tab or window, but also waning death rates from all the nation's top killers, including heart disease, cancer, and drug overdoses.

klooney• 6 months ago

GLP1 theory of everything

pinkmuffinere3• 6 months ago

I think it would depend on how the “weakest groups” are decided. If the weakest 10% of 2021 all died, then the weakest 10% of 2022 will be people who were stronger than 2021’s weakest 10%. All the groups would propagate up to be stronger than in previous years. Now i don’t know how these groups are drawn, percentiles is just what makes intuitive sense to me.

The linked quotes don’t seem to support your argument, unless I misunderstand? If the weakest people die, then the remaining people are expected to be more resilient to heart disease and cancer.

I think decreases in drug overdose and suicide are probably the most isolated from this effect, so I have higher confidence that those decreases are “real”. But I can imagine ways that even they might interact.

jackschultz• 6 months ago

I wonder how much this might change in the coming years purely from GLP-1s. Articles like this[0] (which yes, Betteridge's law applies) talk about how it’s pretty likely they’ll be able to be used by everyone. But even now, taking people with cardiovascular high probabilities and dropping that risk way down purely by giving them the feeling that they’re more full more frequently is crazy to think about. Not sure opinions here but I’m at the point of telling my parents they should both be on these right now in their upper 60s.

Some people shrug it off or claim that they’re higher status because they lost weight via diet and exercise, but I map that to people who think they’re better programmers because they don’t use llms for coding, when the real result is what matters. Similar to people thinking AI slop, there are news articles about what happens if you stop GLP-1s and gain the weight back. But the stories of people who either continue to microdose, or also learn the feelings of their body and how it differs have long term success. Similar to those who know how to work with llms get good results, but the news is about how smarter people don’t use it.

All very interesting subjects. What a world we’re in.

[0] https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-does-it-seem-like-glp-1-...

ls6122• 6 months ago

Obesity reduction if seen through in the long run will have comparable benefits to smoking cessation. The scale of the win here is hard to overstate.

m0llusk2• 6 months ago

Then the reductions in lean muscle mass will start to become visible in all cause mortality statistics. This could be a rough ride.

464931684• 6 months ago

Then why the fuck hasn't the US just added it to Medicare / Medicaid coverage? It makes no sense. These healthcare schemes are costly, and covering this medication would make it... less costly.

eudamoniac3• 6 months ago

A person who does it naturally is still higher status. Staying thin naturally, especially if also fit, indicates a level of will, health focus, and self respect that I appreciate. I wouldn't like to start dating a woman and learn that she has a "thinness subscription". That's a lot of money being spent to avoid discipline, and lack of discipline also is just unattractive. I would consider GLP1 use in a potential partner equivalent to him/her ordering food all the time; it wastes money and indicates that he/she may be lazy or struggling with executive function.

ls6122• 6 months ago

Everyone wants to shit on this news but I think it’s amazing. You can’t go back and change the past but if you’re doing better than you’ve ever done before there’s reason to celebrate even if it would have been nicer if it happened in 2016.

tjwebbnorfolk• 6 months ago

Trump is in office therefore no one is allowed to be happy about anything good happening in the US.

You're only allowed to say "yea but it'd be way better if..."

throwaway290• 6 months ago

Life expectancy stats change over a long time, the cause can be half a century ago

russellbeattie• 6 months ago

I don't think this is necessarily a good thing. The world would be a demonstrably better place if the average life expectancy had remained around 70, like it was the year I was born.

Every new generation deals with growing populations to one degree or a other. World population has doubled in my lifetime for example. But human society just isn't made to have so many long lived people hoarding wealth and power decades beyond what they historically have.

GenX finally outnumbers the Boomers, but that should have happened a decade ago. The damage they've inflicted on the younger generations is really incalculable.

I think as time goes by, we may have to decide that people over a certain age are to be legally treated the same as those under 18.

andrekandre• 6 months ago

  > The world would be a demonstrably better place if the average life expectancy had remained around 70, like it was the year I was born.

idk, the world was a totally messed-up place long before that...

  > The damage they've inflicted on the younger generations is really incalculable.

if you think that is bad, just wait until they solve aging itself...

imagine if we had to argue with 400 year old generals from colonial times.... or robber-barrons of 150+ years ago still trying to dominate everything.

president_zippy• 6 months ago

"One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."

I suppose rooting for people to die doesn't sound barbarous, so long as you're not rooting for anyone in particular to die.

chneu3• 6 months ago

Yeah this is bad news from an environmental standpoint.

We can't stop our status symbol consumption and travel lifestyles. This is just more people to feed, which in our current broken system means more consumption and waste at insane scales.

Fire-Dragon-DoL3• 6 months ago

That 5 years difference between men and women keeps being biologically weird

lotsofpulp5• 6 months ago

Why? They have vastly different biologies.

lostlogin2• 6 months ago

That’s not the only reason. Men are treated differently to women in healthcare.

There is no shortage of data on this. Here is one example: https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-release...

Fire-Dragon-DoL3• 6 months ago

I'm ignorant on the matter, but "vastly" seems a bit too much, given that a good chunk of medicine applies to both. They are different, no doubt, but not the difference between a human and a crab.

5 years life expectancy difference is a lot. As a man, it is frustrating and I want to make sure I get the most out of my life (which I enjoy)

brandonb• 6 months ago

Part of the gap is that men develop heart disease 7 years earlier: https://www.empirical.health/blog/men-vs-women-heart-disease...

dietr1ch• 6 months ago

We are different, you might want to check how hearing decline is also dramatically different

skybrian• 6 months ago

Yeah, that seems curious. But nowadays, you can just ask. So I asked ChatGPT and it listed a wide variety of factors.

Researchers generally group explanations into (1) cause-of-death differences, (2) exposure/behavior differences, (3) healthcare-use differences, and (4) biological differences.

https://chatgpt.com/share/697ec925-3ab0-8000-9a09-d47d2fb33d...

vharuck• 6 months ago

Men do riskier shit when young. They are also less likely to have a primary care physician.

chneu3• 6 months ago

At least in the Freedom Loving USA, real men eat 4 servings of red meat per day and drink beer.

But really, men do dumber shit and tend to have much worse diets than women.

rayiner8• 6 months ago

Comparing these statistics across countries is not useful without demographic adjustment. For example, Hispanics in the U.S. have a higher life expectancy than white people in the UK: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/13te521/life_expect....

mmooss7• 6 months ago

Comparing these statistics across countries is useless without demographic adjustment.

Why is it useless? Any aggregate number can be broken down different ways into different groupings - region, age, education, income, wealth, smoking/not, weight, smartphone use, exercise, sleep, etc etc. By your argument, any aggregate number is useless because, no matter what the researcher chooses, it could be broken down differently.

So why choose race? I think the fact that so many in this discussion repeat the partisan trope - long used to oppose taxpayer-funded services such as healthcare, education, housing, food, etc. - of dividing people by race, is very telling.

sublinear• 6 months ago

Hispanic isn't a race

rayiner8• 6 months ago

Statistics show there is a huge difference in life expectancy based on recency of immigration. Most hispanics in the U.S. are immigrants or children of immigrants. They have the second highest life expectancy despite having the lowest access to healthcare. That’s plausibly explained by the fact that immigrants are more likely to be healthier than the average person in their country.

pinkmuffinere3• 6 months ago

“There are still critical problems in the U.S. public health profile. It should not be big news when the life expectancy rises, which happens every year in every other developed country,” Cohen says

Wow, that’s a really biting criticism of US public health — and rightly so

tsoukase• 6 months ago

If you want to grow up a nation of centenarians, you whould like to promote the following for ALL of them:

1) keep BMI in the low 20s (yes, it's considered normal but difficult to maintain)

2) increase physical exercise: no cars and elevators, yes feet and bicycles

3) ban processed foods and promote cooked ones using local ingredients

4) tackle air pollution, car accidents, work safety and other forms of environmental hazard

5) improve healthcare in a free to all basis, which is of astonishing low importance

6) reduce life stress, which is a subject huge, complicated and subjective that whould need its own ministry, if you are dedicated enough

RickJWagner4• 6 months ago

Living a long time is one thing, living healthy and happy is another.

I don’t have much interest in adding years to my life if they are miserable years.

A wise man once said the goal is to live a long, healthy and vigorous life, then die suddenly.

chneu3• 6 months ago

Functional years are a big concern. A lot of people, especially self inflicted diabetics, spend the last 20ish years of their lives at home doing nothing because their self inflicted disease makes it hard.

Same with most diet or stress caused illnesses, like cardiovascular diseases or lung diseases.

U.S. life expectancy hits all-time high

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