A new interactive tool from the Daily Mail reveals how long you can expect to live based on your age in the US and UK.
You can see what your chances are of dying before your next birthday, based on the latest official life expectancy data in both America and Britain.
For the first time in modern history in the US, people born today are dying younger than their parents, mainly due to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The trend has also been seen in the UK, though it has been worse in the US, where the fentanyl epidemic and rising gun deaths have sent life expectancy back by two years.
For example, a white American boy born today can expect to live to 76 years on average, while a girl will live 80 years.
Their 30-year-old white father will live to 77, while their mother of the same age will live to 81. For ethnic minorities, it’s even more bleak.
In the UK, a baby boy of any ethnicity born today would live to 87, compared to 85 for his 30-year-old father. However, a 75-year-old is expected live to 87.
Dr. Mia Kazanjian, a radiologist and director of women’s imaging at Norwalk Radiology Consultants in Connecticut, told the Daily Mail: ‘We should be living longer given all the new drug developments and technological advances.’
Surges in chronic health conditions like heart disease and cancer due to lifestyle factors such as diet and a lack of exercise could be to blame.
Dr. Kazanjian also notes that COVID-19 has significantly set the US back.
‘We are not seeing the benefits of the advances we have due to the crippling effects of these factors,’ she said.
With rare exceptions, life expectancy had been on the rise in the US and UK throughout history.
In the US it was 47 years in 1900, 68 years in 1950, and by 2019 it had risen to nearly 79 years.
But it fell to 77 in 2020 and dropped further, to just over 76, in 2021. That’s the largest decrease over a two-year span since the 1920s.
The latest CDC National Vital Statistics Report, published last month, found that in 2022, the average life expectancy in the US was 77.5 years.
While that was a 1.1 year increase from 2021 – when up to 26,000 people were dying of COVID-19 each week – it is still down from 79 in 2019 and the lowest since the late 1990s.
For the first time in decades, young Americans are not living as long as their parents, shocking data shows (stock image)
In the UK, the average life expectancy from 2021 to 2023 was 80.8, including 78.8 years for men and 82.8 years for women.
This was in line with the 2020 to 2022 estimate. But in 2014, the average Brit lived a year longer.
Brits still live about two and a half years longer than Americans, which could be due to social issues like drug overdoses and gun violence.
Illicit fentanyl use, for example, surged in the US beginning in the early 2010s. At the start of the decade, 2,666 Americans died of a fentanyl overdose. This figure rocketed to 72,484 in 2021.
Dr. Austin Shuxiao, an internal medicine physician at Peach IV, remains optimistic.
‘The increased awareness in fentanyl, especially as a contaminant in other drugs, will likely lead to a decrease in the overall mortality from fentanyl overdose going forward,’ he told the Daily Mail.
Younger Americans have also grown accustomed to gun violence and mass shootings, which were rare in their parents’ youth.
In its latest data, the CDC estimated that 46,728 Americans died from gun-related injuries in 2023 – 20 percent more than in 2000.
Roughly 325,000 deaths in the US can be tied to obesity, compared to 30,000 in the UK.
The above graph shows the average US life expectancy for men and women from 1900 through 2022, the latest data available
The above graph shows life expectancy in the US by race from 2019 to 2022. Asian-Americans have consistently lived the longest, while American Indians and Alaska Natives have the shortest lifespan
In the US, this so-called ‘epidemic of chronic disease’ became a focus during the 2024 presidential election.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr warned during his presidential run of rising rates of obesity, cancer and diabetes, among other conditions, threatening to drive down life expectancy.
However, experts believe another factor is most to blame. Dr. Kazanjian said: ‘[The biggest factor] would be COVID-19.’
Since 2020, more than 1.2million Americans and over 200,000 Brits have died from COVID.
At the peak of the pandemic, in January 2021, nearly 26,000 people in the US died from the disease in one week.
This was over 50 percent more weekly deaths than those caused by cancer and heart disease, the two leading causes of death in the US.
It was also six times more than the number of Americans who died from accidental injuries per year, the third-leading cause of death.
This surge brought the total number of deaths in 2020 to 3.3million, a 16 percent increase over the 2.8million in 2019.
Last year, there were just over 3million US deaths overall, suggesting the country is still catching up from COVID.
But it’s not just the virus itself driving down life expectancy. Non-COVID excess deaths, or deaths that occurred due to COVID-related disruptions, have also run high since the start of the pandemic.
The above graph shows the leading contributors to life expectancy for Hispanic and Asian-Americans
The above graph shows the leading contributors to life expectancy for white and Black Americans
‘The pandemic caused other downstream effects that worsened life expectancy,’ Dr. Kazanjian said.
‘For example, many people were not going to the doctor for fear of getting the virus, and they were quarantining and thus sedentary, which increased risk of heart disease.
‘Studies found that people missed out on important screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies, leading to delayed cancer diagnoses and potential worsened mortality.’
Mental health also plummeted. In 2021, suicides in the US rose 4 percent compared to the year before, despite rates declining over the two decades prior.
‘Social isolation and stress of losing loved ones during the pandemic took a massive toll on the mental health in the general population, which eventually turned into mortality,’ Dr. Shuxiao said.
Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist in New York City, told Daily Mail that those mental health effects are still prevalent.
‘The stressors that exploded during the pandemic – social isolation, job insecurity, fear – didn’t just fade away. They’ve lingered and evolved, contributing to a national baseline of chronic stress, anxiety and despair,’ he said.
Similarly, Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, told the Daily Mail that the pandemic exacerbated loneliness.
‘Lack of social connection can pose a significant risk for longevity, increasing the risk of premature death. In fact, loneliness is said to pose the same health risks as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day,’ she said.
Alpert believes America’s worsening mental health may also help explain other issues that have driven down life expectancy, like fentanyl overdoses and worsening rates of chronic disease.
‘Rising rates of obesity, heart disease, and even some cancers in younger people are often tied to stress-related behaviors: poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, alcohol consumption, disrupted sleep, and avoidance of medical care,’ he said.
‘COVID was the spark, but it exposed deeper, long-standing issues in how we deal with stress and adversity.’
The CDC’s data also shows certain groups in the US live longer than others. While Asian-Americans lived to 84 in 2022, American Indian and Alaska Natives only lived to 68.
And while white Americans had a life expectancy of 77.5, Black people lived to 72.8 and Hispanic Americans lived to 80.
All groups, however, saw decreases compared to 2019.
