Just in case daily news headlines haven’t already convinced you that all’s far from well in these United States, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) yesterday released a depressing set of statistics, Mortality in the United States, 2015. These show that for the first time in 23 years, overall life expectancy declined in the US in 2015, as compared to 2014, for total population, males, and females.
Overall life expectancy at birth for the total U.S. population– comprising both males and females– declined from 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.8 years in 2014 (as shown in Figure 1 below). For females, life expectancy dropped from 81.3 years in 2014 to 81.2 years in 2015, whereas for males, life expectancy decreased from 76.5 years in 2014 to 76.3 years in 2015.
– Naked Capitalism