THE DECLINE IN LIFE EXPECTANCY IN THE UNITED STATES: SOME CAUSES AND POTENTIAL REMEDIES
THE DECLINE IN LIFE EXPECTANCY IN THE UNITED STATES: SOME CAUSES AND POTENTIAL REMEDIES

Summary/Abstract: Life expectancy in the United States declined in 2015 for the first time in nearly a century, a trend that continued in 2017. This paper explores three central reasons for this reversal: a spike in fatal opioid overdoses; the long-term public health implications of overweight and obesity; and an uptick in suicide. The causes behind each of these are considered. Increased fatality due to the consumption of narcotics is linked both to practices of the pharmaceutical distribution industry that have made opioids widely available and to broad transformations in the US economy over the past forty years that have generated chronic insecurity in many people‟s lives. Multiple reasons for the overweight and obesity epidemic are presented, including changes in people‟s work lives as the US economy has shifted from manufacturing to service employment; advertising and widespread availability of unhealthy food; and influence of industry on national policy governing the food supply. The troubling spike in suicide is attributed in part to the relative ease with which people in the United States are able to gain access to firearms and bullets. The paper concludes with some suggestions on how this decline in life expectancy can be turned around.

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