Alaska’s life-expectancy drop was biggest among all states in pandemic year of 2021, CDC says
Signs posted on March 31, 2021, direct visitors to COVID-19 testing sites on the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium campus in Anchorage. Average life expectancy in Alaska declined that year more than in any other U.S. state, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Nationally, life expectancy declined, a trend driven by COVID-19 but also by drug overdoses, health experts say. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska had the biggest decline in average life expectancy of all U.S. states in 2021, a year when health outcomes were heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent national report .
Alaska's life expectancy in 2021 was 74.5 years, down from the average of 76.6 years in 2020, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overall, U.S. life expectancy declined by 0.6 years in that time, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in drug overdose deaths and other unintentional injuries, the CDC report said. Alaska was among 39 states with declines in life expectancy from 2020 to 2021, the report said.
The CDC estimates life expectancy around the nation based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
The state-by-state report did not specify why Alaska's drop in life expectancy was so big in 2021. But the timing of COVID-19 deaths in the state was different from that in the rest of the nation.
Those deaths in peaked in Alaska in late 2021, later than the peak that hit the United States as a whole , according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Nationally, much of the death toll occurred in 2020, though there were other waves of high death tolls starting in 2021, according to the university's data.
Since 2021, Alaska life expectancies have ticked up, though through 2023 the average remained lower than that in pre-pandemic years, state statistics show.
In 2022, the average life expectancy in the state increased to 76.8 years , according to the Alaska Vital Statistics 2022 Annual Report released last October by the state Department of Health.
The 2023 annual report is still being prepared. Preliminary information shows that Alaskans' average life expectancy increased again last year, to 77.2 years, Richard Raines, a Department of Health research analyst, said by email. That was still below the 2019 average of 78.5 years.
State numbers can vary slightly from the CDC numbers because of different methodologies, Raines noted.
Another factor beyond COVID-19 might have helped drive Alaska's big drop in life expectancy in 2021, Raines said.
"While we can't say definitively why life expectancy estimates for Alaska dropped more than other states in 2021, it is worth noting that Alaska experiences comparatively high rates of accidental drug poisoning (overdose) death," he said by email.
The impact of COVID-19 lessened in Alaska after 2021, state statistics show. The disease was ranked fourth among causes of death in the state in 2022, according to the annual report, down from the No. 3 spot in 2021 . The leading causes in both years were cancer and heart disease, while accidental deaths — which include those from car crashes and overdoses — were the third-highest in 2022.
While Alaska showed the biggest life-expectancy drop that year, it did not rank at the bottom among states overall, according to the report. That distinction belonged to Mississippi, which had a life expectancy of 70.9 years in 2021, the report said. Hawaii had the highest life expectancy in 2021, at 79.9 years, the report said. Alaska that year ranked 39th among all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
