Washington, Dec 22 (FN Agency) Life expectancy in the US dropped to nearly two years in 2020, Covid-19 pandemic being the third leading cause, according to a federal report published on Wednesday. The report stated that the Americans had a life expectancy of 78.8 years in 2019. “Life expectancy for the US population in 2020 was 77.0 years, a decrease of 1.8 years from 2019,” it reported. While it dropped by 2.1 years among men, for females it decreased 1.5 years from 81.4 in 2019 to 79.9 in 2020.
“The thing that stands out to me is just this staggering decline. I know 1.8 years doesn’t seem like a whole lot but, on a population scale, that’s a huge decline in life expectancy,” said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). According to a report by ABC News, this is the biggest decrease seen since World War II, when life expectancy fell by 2.9 years from 66.2 years in 1942 to 63.3 years in 1943. Among the reasons cited for the dip in life expectancy, Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death in 2020. Heart disease and cancer have remained the leading causes of deaths.