Steven Woolf, MD, MPH, is a professor of Family Medicine and Population Health and director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research interests include excess deaths (mortality), health equity, population health, social epidemiology and health services research.
New research suggests that for more than 70 years, citizens of other developed nations have been outliving Americans – and more than 50 countries on six continents have surpassed the United States.
The new study challenges two assumptions that have influenced previous research on the U.S. life expectancy disadvantage. First, past studies have usually only compared the United States with a select group of 15-20 ‘peer countries,’ largely Anglo-Saxon or Western European countries with high incomes. Second, experts typically consider the 1980s or 1990s as the inflection point when growth in U.S. life expectancy began underperforming compared with other countries. However, this analysis shows that premature deaths among Americans are a much larger and older public health issue than previously believed.