The still-raging coronavirus pandemic helped to wipe 1.8 years off U.S. life expectancy last year, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Life expectancy fell to 77 years in 2020, the figures show, in the most dramatic one-year drop in life-expectancy since at least World War II. Elizabeth Arias, a demographer at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, said she had to recheck her calculations several times because the drop was so much bigger she had anticipated. “I knew there was going to be a decline, but I didn’t expect it to be this large,” Arias said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “For some groups, life expectancy declined three years or more.” COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death last year, behind heart disease and cancer. The figures also show the highest ever number of drug-overdose deaths.
