New mortality data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that life expectancy rose by 1.1 years from 2021 and is now at 77.5 as of 2022. Authors of the report said that the increase in life expectancy was mostly due to lower COVID-19 deaths as well as fewer deaths from heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries and homicide.
Life expectancy increased by 1.3 years in men, rising from 73.5 in 2021 to 74.8 in 2022. For females, life expectancy increased by 0.9 years from 79.3 in 2021 to 80.2 in 2022. The difference in life expectancy between men and women was 5.4 years in 2022 — that’s down 0.4 year from 2021.
Life expectancy at the age of 65 for the total population was 18.9 years in 2022, an uptick of 0.5 years from 2021. In men, that rose from 17.0 in 2021 to 17.5 in 2022; in women, it fell from 19.7 in 2021 to 20.2 in 2022. Between both sexes, the difference in life expectancy at age 65 was 2.7 years in 2022 — the same as it was a year earlier.
The 10 top causes of death in 2022 were the same as they were in 2021, but there were some shifts in the rankings. Heart disease and cancer were the top two causes both years. Unintentional injuries, which came in fourth in 2021, jumped to the third in 2022; COVID-19 went from the third-leading cause of death to fourth during 2022, the data showed. The number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 decreased by 55.3% from 416,893 in 2021 to 186,552 in 2022
In 2022, 3,279,857 Americans died — 184,374 fewer deaths compared to 2021.
