Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

 The life expectancy of Americans significantly reduced between 2019 and 2020, from 78.8 years to only 77. A dramatic drop in the last 75 years. Population growth was also the lowest on record.
 American life expectancy has dropped sharply with the Covid-19 epidemic, dropping in one year from 78.8 years to 77 years, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Covid-19, unknown a year earlier, came in as the third most common cause of death in the United States.

The U.S. Census Bureau also reported on Wednesday that the population grew by only 0.1% over a year, a trend that had never been seen before even before the pandemic.
  The United States has already surpassed 800,000 deaths, for a population of nearly 332 million, the effects of the Covid-19 epidemic are now also noticeable in the calculation of the life expectancy of Americans.

This index is an estimate of the average life span of a population that would live its entire life under the conditions of a given year.

It is very different between men and women: the life expectancy of American men is now only 74.2 years, while that of women is now 79.9 years, widening the pre-existing gap by more than six months, year on year. The epidemic also seems to have accelerated the decline in population growth, which is now only 0.1%.

The U.S. population now stands at nearly 331.9 million.

"Population growth has been slowing for years," says Kristie Wilder, a demographer with the Census Bureau, "due to declining birth rates and reduced international migration, while the death rate is increasing due to the country's ageing population."

"Along with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic," the expert continues, "this combination has resulted in a historically slow pace of growth." 
 As an indirect consequence of the pandemic, many urban Americans have chosen to leave the highly urbanized areas of the northeast for the less populated areas of the west.

Texas, for example, recorded a strong 1.1% increase in its population, thanks mainly to the 170,000 or so Americans from other states who chose to settle there.