US Life Expectancy On Track To Reach Record High (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0184279322
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/07/02/227222/us-life-expectancy-on-track-to-reach-record-high
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/02/health/us-death-rate-record-low-cdc-report-longevity
> There were about 689 deaths for every 100,000 people in the US in 2025, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- the lowest rate recorded in more than a century of tracking. The age-adjusted rate has fallen 22% since 2021, landing about 4% lower than it was just before the pandemic in 2019. [...] The top causes of death in the US in 2025 followed longstanding patterns: Heart disease led with nearly 695,000 deaths, followed by cancer with nearly 623,000 deaths.
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> Unintentional injuries, which includes drug overdoses, were the third leading cause of death. Overdose deaths are still high -- about 70,000 people died from an overdose in 2025, preliminary CDC data shows -- but experts say that sharp declines probably played a large role in bringing the age-adjusted death rate down in the US.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/02/health/us-death-rate-record-low-cdc-report-longevity
But... (Score:3)
I thought everbody who sits for more than 30 minutes was dying of cancer.
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The fact that we're even compiling the stats on that is why the life expectancy is going up.
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> I thought everbody who sits for more than 30 minutes was dying of cancer.
It was a 10% change, which in a study of that type is very difficult to distinguish from noise. As often with statistics, this applies: [1]https://xkcd.com/2400/ [xkcd.com]
[1] https://xkcd.com/2400/
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Lets all take note here: A single study that shows a 10% correlation, gets routed through a slashmoron and get turned into
> everbody who sits for more than 30 minutes was dying of cancer.
Yes but we're all going to die (Score:4, Insightful)
I have it under good authority doing months of Facebook related research while pooping that everyone who had the COVID-19 vaccine is going to die in 2026. The BBC reported on it so it must be true. At least a Facebook post reposted an X post that claimed the BBC had an article which reported on it, so surely that must be true.
Decreased obesity (Score:2, Insightful)
How can this be? Climate is killing everyone, air pollution is worse, microplastics is worser, everyone is so poor that they can't eat, everything that trump or musk does is fatal, every single thing is linked to icreased death. Erm /sarc
Re:Decreased obesity (Score:4, Informative)
Lets put it like this: You have to compare 80 years of biography to find out. Right now, people dying did not experience the Great Depression and the Second World War, which gives them a large boost compared to people living 10 years early. We might see the effect of Microplastic in 50 years time.
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Y'know, it feels intuitive to assume that going through some sort of Massively Traumatic Event (e.g. WW2 or Great Depression) would have depressed survivability, but apparently that's -- again, totally counter-intuitively -- not necessarily supported by studies.
For example, [1]this study [jamanetwork.com] comparing Holocaust Survivors lifespans to control group in Israel demonstrated that while Holocaust survivors had more chronic health conditions, "mean age at death was significantly higher in the survivor group compared wi
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2720067?__cf_chl_f_tk=AyVReHi_GISw_NqBBqs2L5pIt6Crq5pBn3P0.uuvX7o-1783093636-1.0.1.1-NZaC2yVsW4zEMg2wR7qhJ4IfjCMcn2kzvAeomABMwio
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Birth rates are at record low since WW2:
www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/birth-rate
So there are fewer people, but they are living longer.
Which is probably the balance required, and probably explains WHY they're living longer too.
Re: (Score:3)
> Birth rates are at record low since WW2:
And yet they still outpaced the death rate.
FTS: "There were about 689 deaths for every 100,000 people in the US in 2025,"
Per the CDC, in 2024 there were 1070 births per 100,000 people in the US.
Personally, I'd be shocked if the COVID years weren't responsible for some of this. It took the lives of the weak and vulnerable at a much greater rate than those that were healthy. Otherwise, many of those folks would still be with us today (and dying off over time).
Re:Decreased obesity (Score:5, Interesting)
> How can this be? Climate is killing everyone, air pollution is worse, microplastics is worser, everyone is so poor that they can't eat, everything that trump or musk does is fatal, every single thing is linked to icreased death. Erm /sarc
Because we've got all the low hanging fruit like preventable diseases in childhood, dangerous products, toxic pesticides, et al. But don't worry, Trump and the Anti-Vaxxers are working tirelessly to bring back such wonderful easily preventable diseases as Polio, Measles, Rubella and if they can manage it, Smallpox.
It should be noted this is a record for the US... which is still lower than almost all other developed nations.
For those who aren't idiots, I'm sure I don't need to explain that the biggest factor is the reduction in infant, child and young adult mortality as people under 25 dying in larger numbers skew the statistics downwards.
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More likely an increase in post-covid vaccination rates.
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Calm down grasshopper. What's being "said" (keep an eye on statistics instead of inflating percentages into everybody) is that taking away many peoples' healthcare (in favor of tax breaks for the wealthy) does not make many people healthier, it makes them more unhealthy and poorer. Everything that el Bunko and Elmo do *sometimes* (more often than should be) make people dead or sick. Cutting minuscule foreign aid kills scores in Africa. Pissing it off on Israel killed scores of Palestinians.
la Presidenta is
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There can be a whole bunch of bad things going on, even as steady improvements elsewhere still has more of an impact. Aside from improvements in medical care, the summary notes explicitly that part of this is due to a reduction in overdose deaths. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean we as a society are handling drug addiction that much better. So many people died that they aren't in the pool. Similarly, some of this is post covid with covid having killed a variety of people, including some very healthy people
Re:Decreased obesity (Score:5, Informative)
> How can this be? Climate is killing everyone, air pollution is worse, microplastics is worser, everyone is so poor that they can't eat, everything that trump or musk does is fatal, every single thing is linked to icreased death. Erm /sarc
In the event that you don't know/understand the answer already, I'll try to illustrate it.
Imagine life-expectancy is say... 80 years and there are exactly 3 causes of death named A, B, and C with evenly-distributed probability.
Imagine we eliminate CoD A entirely. That changes odds of dying of CoD B or C from 33% to 50%.
Imagine also that by eliminating CoD A it adds an average of 5 years of life before death, putting L-E at 85 years.
Imagine we start injecting people with a lightly toxic substance (metaphor for microplastics etc), which damages the body but doesn't kill . Say that knocks 3 years off the average lifespan, dropping L-E to 82 years.
All of the things you're reading about can be true at the same time because words mean things. Bad things are bad, and the take-home is that the bad things are what is keeping things from being better than they are. As another illustration, getting a raise is a good thing, someone making a shitty decision that drives up inflation is a bad thing, and it's possible for you to have marginally more buying power after the two but the shitty decision still sucks.
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Necromancy, or something.
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People stopped smoking.
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> People stopped smoking.
TRUE! That has got to be contributing.
* US Cigarette sales dropped over 70% from early 1980's to 2022 (628b down to 173b). (I can't find good stats past 2022).
* Number of smokers in the US dropped 44% from 1980 to 2022 (51.6m down to 28.8m).
* All while advertising went up! $1.2b in 1980 to $8b in 2022.
Re: (Score:2)
We can calculate it: [1]https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lung-cancer-deaths-per-100000-by-sex-1950-2002
Elon Musk murdered 8 million children (Score:2)
But he did so overseas so it doesn't show up in the statistics. It is strange that he the greatest mass murderer of the 21st century though. I guess maybe Henry Kissinger might be in the running.
As for the orange pedophile the effects of his actions don't really kick in until after the midterms because he doesn't want you to know what he did to you. We did take millions of people off their health care so we could squeeze billionaire tax cuts through the reconciliation process and get past the filibust
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The people in charge of compiling the statistics have been fired and replaced by stooges.
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Well, the Orange Dragon has been President for a year and a half. No doubt he's already killed everyone, so there's no one left to die!
I'm not an epidemiologist but (Score:2)
My guess would be that the recent pandemic that devasted so many populations across the globe may have something to do with the mathematics behind this.
If lots of people died a few years earlier than they would otherwise have done, then that would pull life expectancy downwards temporarily.
Following that, the survivors will on average appear to live longer, pushing apparent life expectancy above normal.
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That sounds like a plausible statistical explanation to me. Unfortunately the government statistics are less reliable than they've ever been. I would want to verify even the gross numbers through a secondary source, and I'm guessing there isn't one.
Will it continue? (Score:3)
One might expect a decrease in the death rate (even age-adjusted) after a pandemic, as a disproportionate number of unhealthy people will have already died. So it will be interesting to see if this continues.
Interesting (Score:2)
So lower academic achievement, longer life, much obesity. I have seen this film before! It's called Wall-E.
I'll just wait here for my app-summoned mobility scooter...
Re: Interesting (Score:2)
Also, now that I think about it, we'll science the shit out of that too.
We prevented enough disease and needless death so people love longer. We made a weight loss drug so them lard tubs are gonna manage to simply be overweight...and perhaps in the not too distance future we'll get some kind of intelligence boosting drug so we can all watch TV guzzling 2L bottles of fizzy drinks, eat some kind of sawdust masked by synthetic flavours and become smarter.
...in the future, will people OD on brain pills?!
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> We prevented enough disease and needless death so people love longer . ...
Awww that's so sweet :-)
Economy (Score:2)
People are now too poor to buy drugs they could have overdosed on.
Optimistic and false picture (Score:3)
The following is also true . People born in the 1970s may represent one of the first generations for whom continued increases in life expectancy can no longer be taken for granted. Unless climate change, air pollution, healthcare, and public health challenges are effectively addressed, future generations could experience lower life expectancy than their parents in some regions, and potentially globally under severe scenarios.
The report ignores the elephant in the room that will lead to many more premature and unexpected deaths. Climate Breakdown.
Not really credible (Score:2)
A post-pandemic boost is plausible, but you cannot trust any numbers from the current US government, especially when it's facing slaughter in the upcoming midterms.
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The national murder rate has been declining since 1993. Some attribute that to Roe v. Wade.
But, but ... (Score:1)
... even though The Handmaid's Tale and Literally Hitler????
Sad that news... (Score:2)
... comes after no longer trusting US numbers.
GLP1 - The Ozempic Effect (Score:2)
GLP1's are the Wonderdrug of the century:
While clearly awesome for weight loss, much of the "beyond" benefit is still being untangled as either a direct drug effect versus downstream consequence of the weight loss and metabolic improvement itself. Many clinicians describe seeing improvement across cardiovascular and metabolic comorbidities "probably due to both weight loss and direct effect of the medication. Most of the newer findings are associational, not proven cause-and-effect.
Slowing Biological
Re: (Score:2)
Japan's death rate is about half what's cited here at about 12,000 per 100,000. Eu's is about 1,000, or about 2/3 higher.
Any more questions you could answer in three seconds at your favorite search engine?