Florida’s life expectancy has reached a new high – South Florida Leads the Way
Bottom Line: We’ll take good news where we can get it, and over the past week we received a double dose of good news based on data from the CDC. U.S. life expectancy bounced back to 79 years most recently – that's up just over seven months from the prior year. And in Florida, the news was even better with life expectancy checking in at about 80.
The age-adjusted death rate dropped 3.8% and in terms of impact...total deaths fell by about 18,000 people last year. In other words, there are about 18,000 people still alive today who previously would have been last summer. Predictably heart disease and cancer remain the two top killers, however progress was made across all top ten causes of death over the past year. The progress held true demographically too.
Across most groups, things improved: men's life expectancy jumped more than women's (0.7 vs. 0.3 years), narrowing the gender gap a bit. Age-specific rates fell for nearly everyone over 1 year old – big drops for young adults 15-34 as overdose deaths declined...however suicides did not.
Specific to Florida, the biggest area of improvement came from fewer drug overdoses and fewer deadly accidents pulling down those unintentional injury numbers nationally. While Florida’s death rates are now better than the national average in just about every category the one place where that’s not the case is with infant mortality rates which remain above the national average with 6.1 infant mortalities per 100,000 births compared with 5.5 nationally.
Post-pandemic recovery is real – fewer COVID deaths, fewer overdoses, better heart and cancer outcomes driving these gains. But challenges like mental health (hello, rising suicide) and infant care persist everywhere, including right here in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast.