U.S. life expectancy rises : NPR

An American born in 2024 can expect to live to age 79, an increase of more than half a year on average compared to 2023. National Center for Health Statistics report Released on Thursday.

Average US life expectancy will reach an all-time high in 2024, according to NCHS data, as the country continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and drug overdose deaths continue to decline.

new high reached The last peak in life expectancy occurred in 2019, and it is the highest since the government began tracking this key measure of the nation’s health and well-being in 1900.

“That’s good news,” says robert andersonChief of the Statistical Analysis and Surveillance Branch in the Division of Vital Statistics at NCHS, a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It seems that we have recovered from the epidemic. This may just indicate that we are back to normal after the epidemic.”

However, Anderson and other experts cautioned that significant disparities remain among Americans and that the US still lags behind other wealthy countries.

“We should celebrate. It is very encouraging to see that the death rate in the United States is decreasing and life expectancy is increasing,” says Ali MokdadAn epidemiologist at the University of Washington. “But we still see very high mortality rates from drugs, very high mortality rates from suicide, high infant mortality rates and high maternal mortality rates. So as we celebrate, we still have a lot of work to do.”

American life expectancy has declined in recent years due to a surge in drug overdoses and deaths from COVID-19. But since then life expectancy has been slowly rising back up. the pandemic is over and in 2023 Drug overdoses started decreasing.

The latest rally seems to be mainly due to Steady decline in drug overdose deaths And from COVID, Anderson says. In fact, COVID dropped out of the top 10 causes of death in 2024 for the first time since the pandemic. At the peak of the pandemic, Covid was the third leading cause of death. Now it is at number 15.

“The decline in COVID-19 mortality rates and drug overdose mortality rates — those were the two main drivers,” Anderson says.

Anderson emphasized that COVID and drug overdoses are still killing too many Americans. Nearly 80,000 Americans could die from drug overdoses in 2024 and more than 30,000 would die from COVID.

And while improvements in mortality rates have benefited all ages, races, and sexes, there are still significant disparities between states, between counties within states, and between different races and ethnic groups.

“Unfortunately, many people are still left behind,” says Mokdad of the University of Washington.

Furthermore, American life expectancy has not increased as fast as that of other countries, and the country lags far behind other rich countries such as Australia, Spain, and Japan.

“At 79, we’re still nowhere near the upper end of the developed world in terms of life expectancy,” says Anderson. “In terms of life expectancy most developed countries are above 80 years of age. So we are still lagging behind other countries.”

Anderson says 2025 life expectancy data so far looks promising for further improvements, But it’s too early to know for sure. But many public health experts worry that the Trump administration’s policies could reverse progress.

“Under the current administration, policies are moving in the opposite direction: less regulations on industry, less access to health care, cut funding for medical research, increase income inequality, raise prices,” says Dr. steven wolfProfessor of Family Medicine and Population Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “All of this is going to have adverse health effects.”

Wolf says: “We worry that the crisis conditions we were seeing even before the pandemic arrived will continue to deepen unless we adopt policies that can actually make America healthy again.”

The Trump administration disputes that characterization and says that under Under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fighting chronic diseases and other health problems is a top priority.

“For the first time in history, under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, HHS is putting Americans first with decisive action to confront the nation’s chronic disease epidemic,” department spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an email to NPR. “HHS is shifting focus toward prevention, nutrition, and chronic disease reduction. Landmark reforms like the MHA Strategy, which includes more than 120 initiatives to tackle the root causes of childhood chronic disease, and the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines, show we are making real change.”

Nixon said: “We continue to reverse Biden-era policies that made Americans sicker, took away health choices, and wasted taxpayer money.”