In 2020, most countries posted a huge decline in life expectancy as COVID-19 boomed. Many countries have shown signs of recovery, but not in the U.S. according to a study published in Nature Human Behavior. Researchers said seven nations in Western Europe showed a significant increase in life expectancy in 2021. However, the U.S. reported the third-largest decline in life expectancy, closely behind Bulgaria and Slovakia. More than two years have been cut off the average life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 in the U.S., when it fell from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.60 years in 2021. The study attributed much of the decline in the U.S. to an extremely low vaccination rate compared with Western Europe.
