The latest U.S. government data release on American mortality has shown that in recent years, the health of the American people got worse. It also got better.
The data release from the National Center for Health Statistics came with the anodyne heading, “Mortality in the United States, 2016.” It contained two statistics supporting two contradictory story lines. In one, life expectancy at birth in the United States shortened by a little over a month, from 78.8 years to 78.7 years in 2015. In the other statistic, the death rate per 100,000 people fell, from 733.1 deaths to 728.8 in the 2015–2016 timeframe.
