Life Expectancy Has Risen in U.S., Health Experts Say

Americans are living longer than ever before and infant mortality rates have dropped to their lowest level on record, federal health officials said Wednesday.

The overall life expectancy in the United States reached a record high of 76.9 years in 2000, while the number of infant deaths fell to 6.9 for every 1,000 live births, down from 7.1 in 1999, according to a government report.

The life expectancy figure means that a person born in 2000 can expect to live nearly 77 years.

And people alive in 2000 who already had reached an age where there was less risk of dying from accidents, homicides or AIDS can expect to live even longer than 77 years. However, as they become older, they are more susceptible to age-related diseases.

A person who was 65 in 2000, for example, will likely live another 17.9 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released the annual report.

The increases in life expectancy were attributed to decreases in deaths from heart disease and cancer; heart disease deaths have been dropping since 1950, while mortality from cancer began to decrease in 1990.

However, heart disease and cancer still are the leading killers of Americans--first and second on the list, respectively--followed by stroke, respiratory diseases and accidents.

Murder, which had been 14th on the list, dropped a notch to 15th, continuing a decline that began in 1991.

Most Americans are dying from age-related diseases that usually develop in later years.

One disease that is making its first appearance among the leading causes of death--14th on the list--is pneumonitis due to solids and liquids. It occurs mostly among the elderly, when food or drink is aspirated accidentally into the lungs, causing pneumonia.

“That’s a new one, and does reflect the aging of the population, the fact that a condition like this is now one of the top causes of death in the nation,” said Jeff Lancashire of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Deaths from other ailments that disproportionately strike the elderly also rose. These include Alzheimer’s disease, influenza, pneumonia, kidney disease, hypertension and septicemia, a blood infection.

In addition to a decrease in deaths from heart disease, cancer and homicides, there was a decline in deaths from suicide, accidents, stroke, diabetes, chronic lower respiratory diseases, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, another serious liver disease that can result from such causes as excessive alcohol consumption and hepatitis B and C.

Broken down by gender, men still do not live as long as women. While the gap between men and women has been diminishing, women still outlive men by 5.4 years. The life expectancy for a male born in 2000 is 74.1 and for a female, 79.5 years.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson attributed the good news about overall longevity--which rose by 0.2 years over 1999--to “progress we’ve made in fighting diseases that account for a majority of deaths in this country.”

Scott Parkin, a spokesman for the National Council on the Aging, an organization of service groups for seniors, said that a combination of medical advances and self-awareness of good health practices is keeping Americans alive longer.

“The explanation is simple,” he said. “Medical technology daily seems to find a new disease to conquer. Also, the whole health promotion and wellness movement has caused the [baby boomers] to pay attention to their bodies and physical well-being.”

Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the CDC, said that more healthy pregnancies were responsible for the decline in infant mortality.

“Timely prenatal care and avoiding harmful behavior like smoking are two examples of how pregnant mothers can protect the health of their infants,” he said.

The CDC recently reported that smoking during pregnancy dropped by 33% between 1990 and 1999.

The rise in life expectancy in the last century has been dramatic. An individual born in 1900 could expect to live to be only a little beyond age 47.

“There were some volatile swings in the early part of the 20th century due to the flu epidemic of 1918,” Lancashire said. “The only time you see blips in modern years is after a particularly bad flu season--the only two declines in the century were during bad flu years--although there have been other factors affecting the trends, when AIDS mortality was sharply increasing, for example. The normal trend is an increase.”

The mortality data were obtained from death certificates by physicians, medical examiners and coroners, and reported to state vital statistics offices.