U.S. life expectancy took "catastrophic" hit last year, biggest since WWII

life expectancy fell by a year-and-a-half in 2020, the largest one-year decline since World War II, public health officials said Wednesday.

The decrease for both Black Americans and Hispanic Americans was even worse: three years.

The drop spelled out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is due mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic, which health officials said is responsible for close to 74% of the overall life expectancy decline.

Black life expectancy hasn't fallen so much in one year since the mid-1930s, during the Great Depression.

Health officials haven't tracked Hispanic life expectancy for nearly as long, but the 2020 decline was the largest recorded one-year drop.

Other problems affected Black and Hispanic people, including lack of access to quality health care, more crowded living conditions, and a greater share of the population in lower-paying jobs that required them to keep working when the pandemic was at its worst, experts said.

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live.

Life expectancy bounced back after those drops, and experts believe it will this time, too.