Americans' life expectancy plummeted by a year and a half in 2020
In the United States, Covid-19 has affected blacks and Latinos much more severely than whites.
AP - Mark Lennihan
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Life expectancy is declining in the United States.
She fell a year and a half last year.
This is the largest drop recorded since World War II.
The figures were published this Wednesday, July 21 by the Federal Public Health Agency.
The coronavirus pandemic explains most of this decline.
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With our correspondent in Washington,
Anne Corpet
In 2019, Americans lived on average to almost 79 years.
Last year life expectancy fell to 77 years and four months.
Minorities show a greater decline than whites: the lifespan of African Americans has fallen by 2.9 years.
That of Latinos recorded an even greater fall, three years less than in 2019.
These figures illustrate the racial disparities in the face of the pandemic: Covid-19 has affected blacks and Latinos much more severely than whites.
They exercise jobs more exposed to the circulation of the virus, continued to use public transport during peaks of contamination and have less easy access to care.
According to experts, this decline in American life expectancy also reveals the upsurge in overdoses in the United States.
They caused 93,000 deaths in 2020, a figure up 30%, in particular due to the widespread consumption of Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid one hundred times stronger than morphine.
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