The Tamesis
By 2024, American life expectancy will rise to 79 years, the highest level in U.S. history.
This is a result not only of the dissipation of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also of falling death rates from all of the nation’s top killers, including heart disease, cancer and drug overdoses.
What’s more, preliminary statistics suggest improvements will continue in 2025.
“This is basically good news,” said Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, which released the 2024 data Thursday.
Life expectancy is a basic measure of a population’s health and is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year can expect to live, based on current mortality rates.
For decades, American life expectancy has increased by at least a point almost every year, thanks to medical advances and public health measures. It peaked in 2014, just shy of 79 years old.
It was relatively stable in the years before the plunge COVID-19 pandemic Killed over 1.2 million Americans. In 2021, life expectancy dropped to just under 76 1/2 years. It has been rebounding ever since.
Boston University researcher Andrew Stokes said the data reflect not just a radical turnaround in the pandemic, but a lasting improvement in the overdose epidemic.
The bad news, Stokes noted, is that the United States still ranks lower than dozens of other countries.
“There’s still a lot to do,” he said.
In 2024, approximately 3.07 million residents of the United States will die, a decrease of approximately 18,000 from the previous year. Mortality rates declined among all racial and ethnic groups and among men and women.
There is no significant change in the infant mortality rate from 560.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023 to 552.5 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the country, but its death rate fell by about 3% for the second year in a row. Dr. Sadia Khan, who treats and studies heart disease at Northwestern University, said it’s likely a combination of factors, including advances in medical treatments and weight management.
Deaths from unintentional injuries, including drug overdoses, have seen the largest decline, falling by more than 14% in 2024. A few years ago, COVID-19 was the third leading killer in the United States, but by 2024, it had fallen out of the top 10.
Although the number of suicides fell in 2024, the decline in COVID-19 meant suicide moved into the top 10. This week’s report said homicides also fell that year.
Death statistics for 2025 have not yet been finalized, but preliminary figures suggest about 3.05 million deaths. That number is likely to increase as more death certificates are compiled and analyzed, but Anderson said he expects last year’s situation to be at least slightly better than in 2024.
