🌅 U.S. Life Expectancy Is Set to Reach a Record High

Sunrise Stat
July 14, 2026

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SOURCE

U.S. life expectancy is set to rise this year, as new provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics shows the national death rate fell to 689.2 per 100,000 in 2025, marking a 4.6% decrease from the year prior and a new record low. The decrease in deaths was measured across all age groups and genders, while death rates also fell for several racial groups (though death rates for Black Americans remain higher than those for all other groups). The report is based on provisional data, meaning the figures could change following further review. Final annual statistics are expected later this year.

Average U.S. life expectancy reached a record high 79 years in 2024, an increase of more than 1.5 years from 2023 as the country continued its recovery from the COVID pandemic. While the 2024 figure was heralded as a milestone, the reality is that it doesn’t represent much of an improvement from 2010, when life expectancy was 78.7 years. Prior to 2010, life expectancy had spent more than a century consistently improving, however, a 2026 study by researchers at Tufts University found it stalled from there, driven by a complex convergence of rising chronic diseases, changing behavioral risks, and increases in certain cancers among younger age cohorts (e.g., the rise of colorectal cancer among millennials and Gen-Zers).

The decline in life expectancy isn’t uniquely American, as several recent studies suggest high-income countries across the world were experiencing slowdowns in life expectancy prior to the COVID pandemic (gains were slowest in the U.S., U.K., Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany). Other research has also uncovered slowing improvements across 20 European nations in recent decades, where gains in life expectancy fell from an average increase of 0.23 years each year from 1990 to 2011 to just 0.15 years from 2011 to 2019.