America’s widening life-expectancy gap with other developed countries

Nautilus reports on Virginia Commonwealth University researcher Steven H. Woolf’s analysis of life expectancy and age-based mortality from 1999 through 2023. The article says the U.S. ranked 38th in life expectancy among countries with populations over 1 million in 2023; in 1980, only 13 such countries ranked higher. Woolf calls for examining systemic factors—including healthcare, poverty and weak regulation—rather than focusing only on opioids, firearms and high-calorie diets. He says other countries have demonstrated that better health outcomes are possible: “What we lack in the United States is not solutions but political will.”