Americans Born After 1970 Are Dying Faster Than Previous Generations Did At Their Age

Key Points:

• A new study tracking American mortality by birth cohort reveals that life expectancy improvements have stalled since the 1950s, with younger generations experiencing higher death rates from heart disease, cancer, and overdoses compared to previous cohorts at the same ages.
• The research identifies two overlapping crises: a generational decline beginning with those born in the 1950s and a nationwide health deterioration starting around 2010, largely driven by stalled progress in cardiovascular disease mortality.
• Americans born after 1970 face particularly alarming trends, with rising death rates from colon cancer, drug overdoses, suicide (especially among women), homicide, and traffic accidents at relatively young ages, suggesting potential future declines in overall life expectancy.
• Factors contributing to these trends include long-term effects of smoking, obesity, the opioid epidemic, social and economic inequality, and stress, with no single cause fully explaining the mortality increases across multiple causes of death.
• The study emphasizes that policies targeting social inequalities and supporting disadvantaged groups could improve national mortality trends, but recent mortality spikes from 2019 to 2022 have partially erased earlier gains, underscoring ongoing public health challenges.