The lead author, Samuel Preston, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, first compared mortality rankings between the US and a broader set of European countries in 2010, finding that the US ranked among the worst in people aged below age 75 among the 18 countries considered.
In the latest analysis, the authors found mortality conditions in the US have worsened significantly since 2000 – and resulted in more than 400,000 excess deaths in 2017 alone.
Paradoxically, in 2017, the US had lower death rates in people aged over 85 – the country had 97,788 fewer deaths than if subject to the European standard.
Preston and his co-author Dr Yana Vierboom, a researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, said they weren’t sure why elderly Americans appeared to be better off.
Although drug poisoning rates have come down since 2017, the story repeats itself with Covid-19, which again had a greater mortality impact in the US than European peer countries, said Patrick Heuveline, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the analysis.