By Stephen Millies
“Americans are dying younger, saving corporations billions,” ran an Aug. 8, 2017, Bloomberg headline. It continued: “Life expectancy gains have stalled. The grim silver lining? Lower pension costs.”
That was over two years before the COVID-19 pandemic killed 6.6 million people worldwide. In the United States—where over a million people have died of the coronavirus — average life expectancy dropped by almost three years. It fell from 78.8 years in 2019 to 76.1 years in 2021.