Beckley, West Virginia is the Premature Death Capital of the US

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 1, 1:00PM EST

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Beckley, West Virginia is the Premature Death Capital of the US — © Beckley Main Street (CC BY-SA 3.0 us) by Tim Kiser

The life expectancy at birth for Americans fell between 2020 and 2021, dropping from 77.0 to 76.1 years, according to the CDC. A great deal of the decrease was due to COVID-19 deaths, suicides, and drug overdoses. The figure varied by gender and race. (Here’s how the fall in U.S. life expectancy compares to that in other wealthy nations.)

Another contributor was that some states and cities have residents with very low life expectancies for reasons having to do with their behavior – especially smoking. This is led by Beckley, West Virginia – which places No. 1 on our list of U.S. cities with the most smokers , where the figure is 71.9 years.

People in Beckley face several factors which cut longevity. Most are self inflicted. The best example is smoking. Over 26% of adults there smoke regularly. This may also be a primary reason that Beckley residents have the highest level of premature deaths among America’s 384 metros, at 644 per 100,000 people.

People in Beckley appear to know their health is poor. Some 27% report they are in poor or fair health, the ninth highest of all metros.

According the the Census, Beckley has 17,084 residents. Of these 72% are white and 19% are Black. The residents are extremely poor. The median household income is $39,845, which is just over half the national average. The poverty rate is 23%, which is about double the national number. If poverty is a factor in poor health, Berkeley is an example of the effects.

Click here for the U.S. cities with the most smokers

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.