Improvements in mortality rates are slowed by rise in obesity in the United States

(University of Pennsylvania) With medical advances and efforts to curb smoking, one might expect that US life expectancy would improve. Yet there's been a reduction in the rate of improvement in American mortality during the last three decades. Penn researchers say a rise in obesity is to blame, slowing declines in death rates by a half-percentage point per year. The scientists estimate that rising obesity was about twice as important for mortality trends as a decline in smoking.