US life expectancy drops again, overdoses climb
Life expectancy in the United States dropped yet again as
drug overdose deaths continued to climb -- taking more than 70,000 lives in
2017 -- and suicides rose, a US government report said Thursday.
The drug overdose rate rose 9.6 percent compared to 2016, while suicides climbed 3.7 percent, said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
As a result, the average life span in America dropped to "78.6 years, a decrease of 0.1 year from 2016," said the report, which contains the first public release of final mortality data for 2017.
Overall, the statistics show a "downward trend in life expectancy since 2014," a time period over which Americans have lost 0.3 years of life, said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the NCHS.