Shutterstock / David Fuentes Prieto
The average life expectancy in Texas at the end of 2022 was 75.4 years.
Indeed, the average life expectancy in Texas slid by 3.83% from 2018 to 2021, according to Forbes Advisor analysis, ranking it as the state with 14th-largest decline during that period. As a result, the average life expectancy in the Lone Star State is now 75.4 years.
To come up with the numbers, Forbes researchers analyzed each state's life expectancy numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and calculated the percentage declines. The 2018 to 2021 numbers are the most recent available.
At 5.4%, New Mexico tallied the largest drop — 77.2 years to 73 years — over the study period, while Massachusetts' 0.6% decline was the nation's smallest — 80.1 years to 79.6 years.
The report attributes the overall declines to COVID-19 deaths, drug overdoses and accidental injury. Texas' leading causes of death for the study period were heart disease, COVID-19 and cancer.
Seven of the 10 states that had the most serious declines in life expectancy are in the South, according to Forbes' numbers.
The study doesn't posit a reason why states recorded such different declines in life expectancy. However, a similar 2022 analysis by Harvard Medical School noted that social determinants such as poverty, healthcare access and food insecurity can vary by location.
Texas, for example, has the nation's highest percentage of uninsured residents at 18%, according to U.S. Census data. The state's poverty rate also exceeds the national average, ranking it 11th in the U.S. in 2022, according to Texas Demographic center.
"Lower life expectancy in southern states raises the possibility that politics, vaccination policies, pollution, climate, or other variable factors may contribute to discrepancies in life expectancy," the Harvard study states.
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