Life expectancy in the United States has dropped for the second straight year, a government report said on Wednesday.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the average American born in 2021 will live for about 76 years.The average was 78 years and 10 months in 2019.And it dropped to 77 years in 2020.Health officials blamed COVID-19 for half of the decrease.They said the rest was connected to longstanding problems such as drug overdoses, suicide and heart and liver disease.Samuel Preston studies human population, or demographics, for the University of Pennsylvania.He called the situation "dismal," or very bad."It was bad before and it's gotten worse," he added.Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, given death rates at that time.Robert Hummer is a researcher who studies population health at the University of North Carolina.
