Living in the US poses a major threat to a person’s health, and for people between the ages of 25 and 44, the threat is worse, research has found. 

Approximately three million deaths occur annually in the US, which has a mortality rate significantly exceeding that of its counterparts. Researchers estimate a disparity with other countries that accounts for 25 percent of American deaths.

The crisis is most acute for Millennials aged 25 to 44. The gap for this demographic in particular is a whopping 62 percent of deaths. 

According to CDC guidelines, millennials are divided into two age categories: those aged 25 to 34 and those aged 35 to 44. Their annual mortality risk ranges between 148 and 237 per 100,000 individuals.

Prior to 2010, millennials demonstrated improving health and social trends. Cancer death rates were decreasing due to innovative specialized treatments, homicides had significantly reduced, heart disease fatalities were declining, and smoking rates among young people were lower.

However, the new decade saw a dramatic turnaround, driven by the worsening opioid crisis and other persistent issues such as suicide, homicide, traffic accidents, and metabolic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association since 2002, informed the Daily Mail, ‘We saw increases in morbidity and mortality because of obesity and, naturally, the presence of firearms.’

‘Cardiovascular disease mortality stagnated for a few years, and the reduction in cancer deaths plateaued somewhat. Consequently, there were increases in morbidity and mortality before the pandemic.’

The mortality rate ratio shows how much more likely an American is to die than a person in another high income country. In 2023, US adults aged 25 to 44 were 2.6 times more likely to die than their international peers

Researchers behind a new study on excess deaths found that the pandemic caused a spike in Covid deaths while also amplifying fatalities from overdoses, suicide, accidents and homicide among young adults.

Excess deaths refer to deaths above the number that would be expected if the US had the same mortality rates as other wealthy nations. 

A coalition of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Minnesota, Boston University and Hunter College found that a 25- to 44-year-old in the US is 2.6 times more likely to die than a person of the same age in other wealthy countries, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, France, Germany, Spain and others.

‘By 2023, American early adults’ chance of dying was 70 percent higher than it would have been had the lifesaving trends of the early 2000s continued,’ they said.

The exact causes are unclear, but likely drivers include pandemic-era job loss, which exacerbated rising rates of what health researchers call deaths of despair driven by increased substance use and sustained depression that hit young adults hardest. 

‘This age group experienced hardships during Covid that are difficult to bounce back from,’ they said. 

To measure excess deaths, the team used publicly available (through Human Mortality Database) death records from January 1980 to December 2023 from the US and 21 wealthy peer nations. 

The team found 62 percent of deaths in the Millennial group are excess deaths, and observed the gap between the US and other countries is far larger than for any other American age group.

For millennials, nearly two out of three deaths are considered ‘excess’ (stock)

From 1980 to 2023, there were nearly 14.7 million excess deaths in the US.

Excess deaths among millennials spiked during the pandemic and accelerated a pre-existing negative trend where mortality rates from overdoses, suicide and heart disease had already been rising in previous years.

Millennials have been the generation most affected by the opioid epidemic in the US, experiencing the largest share of fatal overdoses compared to other age groups.  

According to public health nonprofits Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust, Millennial opioid overdose deaths surged over 500 percent from 1999 to 2017. 

During the same period, synthetic opioid death rates increased by 6,000 percent.

Millennials also make up the demographic most likely to be obese, which drastically raises the risk of acquiring a range of disorders from diabetes and heart disease to certain cancers.

Obesity is a significant issue across all age groups, but CDC data reveals that rates climb sharply through early and middle adulthood.

With an obesity rate of 46.4 percent, Americans aged 30 to 39 have the highest prevalence of any age group.

The variety of rising death causes – from accidents to chronic diseases – points to a deep, systemic failure, the research team said.

Nationwide, America has a life expectancy of 77.5 years, according to the latest estimates from the CDC

The millennial generation has faced unique economic hardships and societal challenges, leaving them disillusioned and financially insecure.

‘These economic and health inequities are likely to further increase with cuts to the country’s social safety net, including to programs such as Medicaid, to pay for tax cuts for high earners,’ said the team behind the latest research, published in JAMA Health Forum.

‘Technological advancements may lead to widening income inequality if stable jobs are replaced by AI.’

Dr Benjamin predicted that the US is likely to lag behind fellow wealthy countries for years. 

‘Not only are we going to get, in my view, an increased gap between us and the other industrialized nations, but our numbers are going to get worse.