Jan 29 - U.S. life expectancy climbed to 79.0 years in 2024, an improvement of more than six months from the prior year and the highest level recorded, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. The National Center for Health Statistics' report credits the increase in large part to substantial declines in fatalities from COVID-19 and other unintentional injuries such as accidents.
The report found that life expectancy rose for both men and women, and that improvements were recorded across racial groups and among Hispanics. The new figure surpasses the previous peak recorded in 2014. The trend has been upward since 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic produced the largest single-year drop in decades, lowering average life expectancy to 76.1 years.
In the breakdown of leading causes of death, nine of the top ten entries were unchanged from 2023. COVID-19, which ranked 10th in 2023, experienced a 37% decline in deaths and dropped to the 15th position in 2024, with suicide taking its former spot among the top ten causes.
The leading causes of death in 2024 remained consistent at the top: heart disease was the number one cause, followed by cancer and unintentional injuries. Collectively, the ten leading causes accounted for more than 70% of all deaths in the United States, the report states.
"You’ve got those two things working together: improvements coming out of the pandemic and then declines in overdose deaths," Robert Anderson, chief of the Statistical Analysis and Surveillance Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told the Wall Street Journal.
The CDC released the report online. The agency was not immediately available for comment specifically on the contribution of drug overdose deaths to the overall life expectancy gain.
Details from the report indicate a recovery in mortality measures following the pandemic years, with particular reductions in deaths tied to COVID-19 and some categories of unintentional injury. At the same time, the persistence of longstanding leading causes such as heart disease and cancer means that the majority of U.S. deaths remain concentrated among a relatively small set of causes.
The report's findings offer a snapshot of mortality patterns for 2024, highlighting both areas of improvement and areas where mortality remains elevated.