"U.S. life expectancy at birth for 2021, based on nearly final data, was 76.1 years, the lowest it has been since 1996," the report stated.
This reflected a decrease of 0.9 year compared to 2020 and 2.7 years since 2019, with two thirds of the decline taking place during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moreover, American Indian and Alaskan Native populations experienced the largest decline in life expectancy among racial groups, falling from 67.1 in 2020 to 65.2 in 2021, which was the same figure for the entire US population in 1944.
COVID-19 was the "leading cause" behind the drop in life expectancy for Americans overall and for black, white, and American Indian and Alaskan Native populations, according to the report’s analysis.