Although industrialized nations are believed to have better health care, fewer health risks, and longer life expectancy, a recent report from the National Center For Health Statistics reports that life expectancy actually dropped in the United States for the first time in two decades. Chief among the causes of this shift is an increase in death due to diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

Numerically speaking, the drop in life expectancy was small – in 2014 the life expectancy was 78.9 years, compared to 78.8 in 2015.  Nevertheless, it is rather alarming, especially when comparing it to the World Health Organization report, which stated an increase in global life expectancy by five years since 2000. Whereas the rest of the world is, on average, living longer, this trend doesn’t hold in the U.S., particularly among white males, white females, and black males

The Huffington Post talked to Jarron Saint Onge, professor of sociology at Kansas University, about these findings. Saint Onge said that this drop in life expectancy challenges the very idea of what it means to be an advanced society. Saint Onge believes that the effects are most notable in poorer communities, saying, “It has to do with smoking, obesity, lack of quality diets and exercise, which are really responses to poverty.”