US life expectancy declined even more than previously thought in 2020

• The CDC released new data on US life expectancy on Wednesday that showed a greater drop than expected.
• The data showed life expectancy in 2020 was 77 years, down from 78.8 in 2019.

Life expectancy in the United States declined by 1.8 years in 2020, which is even more than preliminary estimates showed earlier this year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics released new data on life expectancy in the US on Wednesday, showing that life expectancy in 2020 was 77 years, down from 78.8 in 2019.

The drop marks the biggest dip in life expectancy since World War 2.

A report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in July estimated life expectancy would be 77.3 years for 2020.

COVID-19 was the third-leading underlying cause of death in the US in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer, the NCHS said in its new report.

The data showed that COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death in more than 350,000 people last year, while heart disease was the underlying cause of death in approximately 696,000 people, and cancer was the underlying cause of death in approximately 602,000 people.

Accidents and unintentional injuries, which include overdoses, were the underlying cause of death in more than 200,000 people, the data showed.

The CDC said earlier this year that drug overdose deaths accounted for more than 100,000 deaths alone between April 2020 and April 2021, up from 78,000 the year before.

Elizabeth Arias, an author on the recent report and the report from July, previously told Insider that life expectancy could increase again as COVID-19 deaths decrease.

She said, however, that it could take years to increase back to 2019 numbers.

"Even if we were to able to eradicate COVID deaths completely, we will have the indirect effects of the pandemic present themselves in increases in other causes of death," she told Insider in July.