A new study found more than 1 million U.S. deaths a year—including those in young people and working-age adults—would have been averted if the United States had mortality rates similar to other wealthy nations.
Published in the journal PNAS Nexus, researchers assessed how many U.S. deaths would have been avoided each year from 1933 through 2021 if U.S. age-specific mortality rates had equaled the average of 21 comparable wealthy nations.
The analysis includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Using mortality data from the Human Mortality Database and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, results showed the U.S. had mortality rates lower than peer countries in the 1930s-1950s, similar mortality rates in the 1960s and 1970s, and experienced a steady rise in the number of “missing Americans” in the 1980s….