U.S. life expectancy is about two years shorter than that of similar countries, cut short by drugs, violence, and car crashes, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The life expectancy for U.S. men is 76.4 years, compared to 78.6 years for men in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, HealthDay reported. U.S. women can expect to live 81.2 years compared to 83.4 years for women in those other countries.
About 50 percent of the gap for men and 20 percent of the gap for women is due to three factors: car crashes, shootings, and drug overdoses, according to lead researcher Andrew Fenelon, a senior service fellow at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.
These three causes accounted for 6 percent of deaths among men and 3 percent among women. While they account for a relatively low percentage of deaths in the U.S., they weigh more heavily in life expectancy because of their effect on young people.
"When young people die, they lose many more years of life than older people, so the things that kill younger people may be more important for life expectancy," Fenelon said, according to HealthDay.
Data from the U.S. National Vital Statistics System and the World Health Organization Mortality Database were used in the study, which calculated death rates by
age, sex, and cause, Reuters reported.
“Against what people would commonly expect, life expectancy in the U.S. is considerably reduced compared to many other countries,” Benedikt Fischer of the Center for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University in Toronto, Canada, told Reuters. “All three major problems we know are modifiable, and targeted well-informed effective policies can make a great difference.”
He called the findings a “clear policy failure” and said the study should “ring all available alarm bells.”
Among men, gun violence made the biggest difference, accounting for five months of
shorter life expectancy, The Washington Post said. Women were most affected by drug poisonings, including overdoses, which accounted for 2.4 months of shorter life expectancy.
Fenelon plans further study to examine socioeconomic factors among Americans who die from these three causes, The Post said.
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