Life expectancy is a common indicator that can help examine the health of a community, state or country.
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Longer life expectancy may be attributed to a variety of social determinants – like higher income, access to quality health care or better education – and how long Americans can expect to live has generally increased greatly over the past century. Yet declines also have occurred in tandem with crises like war, widespread disease and the ongoing opioid epidemic.
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In 2020, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 77 years – a drop from 78.8 years in 2019, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers attribute much of the decline to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was responsible for approximately 10% of deaths in 2020, and to unintentional injuries, particularly fatal drug overdoses.
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The difference in life expectancy between men and women in the U.S. was 5.7 years in 2020, with that disparity ranging from a high of 7.0 years in the District of Columbia to a low of 3.9 years in Utah, according to the CDC. Life expectancy at birth among males was 74.2 years, while female life expectancy was 79.9 years.
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[MORE: The 25 Counties With the Longest Life Expectancy]
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Overall among states, life expectancy at birth declined for all 50 plus D.C. from 2019 to 2020, with drops ranging from 0.2 year to 3.0 years. New York, D.C., Louisiana, New Jersey, and Arizona saw the greatest declines in life expectancy at birth from 2019 to 2020, while Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Washington and Oregon experienced the smallest declines over the same period.
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The gap in total life expectancy at birth also widened between the state with the longest span and the state that ranked last, going from 6.5 years in 2019 to 8.8 years in 2020, according to CDC data.
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Seven states with the longest total life expectancy at birth in 2019 were again among the top 10 in 2020, with New York, New Jersey and Colorado making way for entries from New England, the Pacific Northwest and the West.
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These are the states with the longest life expectancy at birth in 2020, according to CDC data.