Americans Born in 2015 Have Shorter Life Expectancy, Deadlier Causes of Death

After almost 20 years, the life expectancy of Americans has declined by 36.5 days compared to 2015. This means that those born in 2015 in the US will only have a life expectancy of 78.8 years on average.

According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the decline was due to more severe or deadlier causes of deaths, which include heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney disease, unintentional injuries and suicide. These leading causes of death remained the same from 2014 and attributed to 74.2 percent of all the deaths in the U.S. in 2015.

The CDC report states that the 2015 life expectancy of 78.8 years showed a 0.1-year decrease from 2014. Age-adjusted death rates also increased by 1.2 percent -- from 724.6 deaths per 100,000 Americans in 2014 to 733.1 deaths in 2015.

The report also noted that males' decrease in life expectancy in 2015 were bigger than females. The former is now at 76.3 years (from 76.5 years in 2014) while the latter is at 81.2 years (from 81.3 years in 2014).

Meanwhile, the mortality rate for infants did not show any significant changes. The leading causes of death for infants are congenital malformations, low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome, maternal complications, cord and placental complications, respiratory distress of newborn, to name a few.

“This is unusual. 2015 is kind of different from every year. It looks like much more death than we have seen in the last few years," Jiaquan Xu, lead author of the study and an epidemiologist, told AFP as quoted by Onmedica.

USA Today notes that the report got its data by analyzing death certificates in 2015. The number of deaths in 2015 also increased by 86,000 than the previous year at 2.7 million deaths.