1:59

along with the stories they weave.

2:04

This week, the average life expectancy of

2:07

Americans is shrinking at

2:09

an alarming rate. Between 2019

2:12

and 2021, a staggering 2.7

2:15

years was shaved off, leaving the revised

2:18

figure at 76.1

2:20

years, the lowest it's been in more than

2:22

two decades.

2:24

It also sees the states rank

2:26

46th in the global life expectancy charts

2:29

behind Estonia and just a nose ahead of Panama.

2:32

So why, on average, are citizens in

2:34

the world's richest country dying

2:36

younger?

2:37

Oh, and spoiler alert, this

2:40

story isn't really about Covid. What

2:42

we see first of all is starting in about 2010, the steady

2:45

progress that the US had been

2:49

seeing in life expectancy just flattens off. But

2:51

then the decline probably starts, I

2:54

would say, around 2014. John

2:57

Byrne Murdoch is chief data reporter

2:59

at the Financial Times in London. The single

3:01

biggest reason seems to be these deaths from

3:03

external causes. That essentially means

3:06

something that isn't from a disease,

3:07

from an infection, from a virus.

3:11

It's things like violence, it's accidents,

3:13

which could be road accidents or accidents at the workplace,

3:16

particularly in the last two or three years have been rising.

3:18

We've got drug overdoses.

3:20

John tells me alcohol related deaths, suicide

3:23

and the knock on health implications of a poor diast

3:26

are, amongst other things, accountable

3:28

for the steep drop and that these type

3:30

of deaths, these external causes,

3:32

as he puts it, occur most commonly

3:34

across America's poorest states and

3:37

zip codes.

3:40

What's really happening here in these poor

3:42

neighborhoods where life expectancy is very low? If

3:45

an area has, say, a life expectancy of 60 years,

3:48

it's not that everyone is dying at 60. You've

3:51

still got plenty of people there living to be 70 or 80,

3:54

but there'll be a lot of people dying at 15, at 25, at 35. And

3:58

that's the key to understanding what's going on here.

3:59

in the US. When wading through

4:02

and crunching the vast reservoir

4:04

of numbers, John came across some

4:06

standout stats that helped to explain

4:08

why so many Americans are dying

4:11

so young. In the US, almost 10% of

4:14

drivers of people in the front seats of cars still

4:16

don't wear seat belts, whereas in the UK that figure

4:18

is only around 2 or 3%. In

4:21

the UK, the number of deaths per million

4:23

people from road fatalities in any given

4:25

year is around 20 or 25. In

4:29

the US, it's

4:29

around 150. Your chances of being

4:33

killed by a car or van or

4:35

lorry in the US are

4:37

six times higher than in the UK.

4:40

So now to Covid. John

4:42

removed the devastating impact of the pandemic

4:44

from the overall numerical equation

4:47

and found something surprising. What

4:49

that shows is that for pretty much every

4:52

country, if you remove Covid, you

4:55

get rid of this drop in life expectancy. Whereas

4:57

in the US, instead of that flat line, you

5:00

still get a significant dip. You still

5:02

get one year of life expectancy erased,

5:04

even after you remove Covid. Of

5:07

all of the stats then and data points that

5:09

you have dug deep, drilled

5:11

down to find on this

5:13

subject, which one stands

5:15

out for you most? So I think for

5:18

me, it's that 1 in 25

5:20

US 5-year-olds will not make it to their

5:23

40th birthday. I just think it's astonishing.

5:27

I did a whole series of posts

5:29

where I did it by age groups, five-year

5:32

age groups, and I had

5:34

one called Millennial Massacre, looking

5:37

at the age groups from age 18

5:39

to 39, which

5:42

is, you know, approximately

5:44

the millennials.

5:45

That's Mary Pat Campbell. She's

5:47

a life actuary and also hosts a well-subscribed

5:50

sub-stack, where she rummages through data

5:52

such as this. Now, I've asked

5:54

her to help with unpacking some of the starker

5:56

stats. First, we circle back to

5:59

drugs.

5:59

the colossal rise in overdoses.

6:02

So from 1999 to 2014, there was an average 7.7% per year increase in

6:04

drug overdose deaths.

6:12

From 2014 to 2019, that average increase per year went

6:14

to 9.6%. 2020, 35% increase

6:21

in one year. I

6:25

mean, that's huge. It's huge. Absolutely

6:28

huge. Yes. This is the one I keep pointing

6:30

out to people. It's

6:33

devastating. And again,

6:35

it's young Americans who are bearing the brunt

6:37

with Black and Native American men overdosing

6:40

most often. For age 18 to 24, and

6:42

I'll do 2020, drug overdoses were like 39%

6:44

of their mortality increase.

6:51

Wow. The big problem

6:54

is opioids, drugs that work as

6:56

strong pain relievers. Morphine

6:59

and other types of potentially addictive painkillers

7:01

accounts for the legal opioids

7:03

on the market. But then comes drugs like heroin

7:05

and most lethally of late fentanyl,

7:08

which can also be bought on the black market.

7:11

Dr. Nick Mark works in a hospital in

7:13

Washington, DC, and he's seen

7:15

the rise in deaths from opioids at

7:18

first hand.

7:19

Over the last decade, opioid deaths have

7:21

quadrupled in the United States. In 2010,

7:24

there were a little over 21,000 deaths from opioids.

7:28

In 2021, that had increased to over 80,000, a fourfold increase. The

7:33

major factors that have contributed, one

7:35

was the overprescription of opioids, and

7:37

then a lack of treatment options for people

7:39

who are suffering from addiction. US

7:42

adults consume about 80% of

7:44

all opioids in the world.

7:46

In 2021, COVID deaths accounted for 14% of fatalities

7:48

among 40 to 44 year olds and drug

7:51

related

7:59

deaths.

7:59

caused a 55% spike

8:02

in that same age bracket when compared

8:04

to 2019. Moving

8:07

on to violent deaths, specifically those

8:09

involving firearms, well, where do

8:11

they feature in all of this? From 2019

8:13

to 2021, we see there was a 45% increase in gun homicide

8:16

deaths, but Mary

8:21

Pat Campbell says there's something unexpected

8:24

that overshadows even those harrowing

8:26

figures.

8:27

You think violence, you think homicide, but

8:29

of course most of those are going

8:32

to be gun homicides and

8:34

that is going to be younger people

8:36

again, but one of

8:38

the things people don't realize with

8:41

regards to gun deaths is

8:44

it's over 50% suicides

8:47

and the rate is higher with

8:50

old males. Dr.

8:52

Nick Mark also says these deaths are

8:54

not equally spread across the states. Gun

8:57

deaths in the US are largely clustered

9:00

in southern states, even though cities like New York City

9:02

has this reputation as being violent,

9:05

New York City is actually much safer than

9:07

states like Canada in terms of your

9:10

risk of dying with a gun.

9:11

Indeed, he agrees that the extent of the mortality

9:14

problem in America is heavily

9:16

dependent on where you live.

9:18

If we think of each state as a country, we can

9:20

compare them to the world. So Hawaii,

9:22

life expectancy 82.3 years in 2019, would

9:26

be in 12th place worldwide

9:28

in between Spain and Sweden.

9:29

In 2020, the life expectancy in Mississippi

9:32

fell to 71.9. That

9:34

would put Mississippi in 127th place worldwide in between

9:39

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

9:41

So rich states do a lot better than

9:43

poorer states. That's not a surprise,

9:46

perhaps, but there's plenty in these

9:48

latest revelations that is, believes

9:50

Dr. Nick Marks.

9:52

Since the 19th century, life expectancy

9:54

in western countries has increased pretty

9:56

dramatically.

9:57

Someone born in 1900 could expect

9:59

to live about...

9:59

someone born in 1950 could expect

10:02

to live 68 years.

10:04

And by 2019, that had risen to 79 years.

10:07

But in 2020, it fell to 77. And

10:10

in 2021, it fell to 76. To

10:13

put that another way, in the last two

10:15

years, we've lost over a quarter

10:17

century of progress in life expectancy.

10:20

All told, the pandemic, the drugs

10:22

epidemic and endemic kinks

10:25

and tears in the fabric of American

10:27

society appear to have combined

10:29

to be behind this most fateful

10:32

of downward trends. That's

10:34

it for this week, but please do keep your questions and

10:36

comments coming in to more or less at bbc.co.uk.

10:41

We'll be back next week. And until then, it is goodbye

10:43

from me, Paul Connolly and everyone on the team.

10:49

In 2008, 23-year-old Norwegian student,

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Martina Vik Magnussen went

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missing after a night out with friends in

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London. I wonder what on

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earth could have happened. We were so

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obsessed with just finding her. Then...

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I'm a black woman, I'm

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a black woman. 23-year-old Martina

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in the basement. I'm Noelle in MacCaffey,

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and I've been following the stories since Martina

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family to find out what happened

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and find the only suspect in the case.

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Farooq Abdelhak...

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Leave me a message and I'll get back to you.

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He's never been questioned by the police. Nobody's

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been able to speak to him. Until

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now. Murder in Mayfair.

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You can listen to the whole story now. Search

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