“Contemporary Trends in American Mortality: International Comparisons and Emerging Challenges”
Abstract: The decades surrounding the turn of the 21st century have been a challenging period for American mortality. The United States is currently facing a large-scale opioid epidemic, and life expectancy barely increased between 2010 and 2015. This talk will cover various dimensions of contemporary trends in American mortality including the contribution of drug overdose to educational gradients in life expectancy, an analysis of the contemporary drug overdose epidemic in international perspective, and how the U.S.’s recent life expectancy stagnation has impacted its standing in international life expectancy rankings relative to other high-income countries.