/Photo: Jasper Colt, USA TODAY
By Doyle Rice | USA TODAY
Life expectancy in the U.S. has fallen for the second year in a row, thanks to a combination of drug and alcohol use and suicides, according to a new report released Wednesday.
The drop was particularly large among middle-age white Americans and those living in rural communities, experts said in a report in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.
The report complements one released in December from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that also found U.S. life expectancy was down for the second straight year.
“We are seeing an alarming increase in deaths from substance abuse and despair,” said Steven Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University, a co-author of the latest report. The idea of the “American Dream” is increasingly out of reach as social mobility declines and fewer children face a better future than their parents, he said.
