The authors assembled life expectancy and age- and cause-specific mortality for the United States from 1999 to 2023 alongside 16 high-income comparators, drawing on the US Mortality Database, CDC, OECD and UN sources, and added a state-level analysis of life expectancy against the governor's party from 1941 to 2022. The United States ranked 38th for life expectancy in 2023, with the shortfall driven by deaths below middle age, including drug overdose, alcohol, homicide, suicide and cardiometabolic disease. They attribute the divergence to health system, socioeconomic and policy factors, with state-level variation increasing.
Why it is interesting: It places the US working-age mortality shortfall and its substance and suicide component in one cross-national and state-level frame.