A worrying health pattern for some of the Gen X and Millennial crowd has been highlighted by a new study: people born between 1970 and 1985 are experiencing worse mortality rates than the generations before them, across multiple causes.

The international team of researchers analyzed cause-of-death records over more than 40 years, between 1979 and 2023, to examine changes in life expectancy and the underlying reasons that could be shaping it.

What stands out is that being born in the 1950s – the middle of the Baby Boomer generation – marks a turning point: from steadily decreasing mortality rates and better health outcomes compared with earlier groups, to the opposite.