The U.S. life expectancy jumped significantly in 2023, hitting its highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic. The new findings come from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report on Thursday, Dec. 19, revealing life expectancy among Americans rose to 78.4 years last year, up nearly an entire year from 77.5 years in 2022.
Health officials say a one-year jump in life expectancy was previously unheard of before the COVID-19 pandemic. They attribute the rise in life expectancy largely to a decline in COVID-19 deaths, which, from 2019 to 2021, had caused U.S. life expectancy to drop from 78.8 years to 76.4 years.
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COVID-19 went from the fourth leading cause of death in 2022 to 10th in the United States in 2023. COVID-19 deaths dropped last year from 350,000 deaths in 2020 to 76,000 in 2023.
The biggest decrease in COVID-19 deaths is reportedly among Hispanic men and women, who saw a more than 10% decrease in COVID-19 deaths.
The CDC also found that overdose deaths decreased last year for the first time since 2018.
The rate of overdose deaths dropped from nearly 33 in every 100,000 people to a little more than 31 per 100,000 people. The group seeing the largest drop in drug overdose deaths was 15 to 24-year-olds, who saw a drop of more than 10%.
The top five causes of death last year in the United States were heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Rates for 9 of the 10 leading causes of death reportedly fell in 2023 while cancer deaths remained largely unchanged.
