The United States has set a new record for its lowest death rate, according to provisional data released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In 2025, the US registered 689.2 deaths per 100,000 people, marking the lowest level since data collection began over 125 years ago.
This decline in the death rate is expected to lead to a new record high for US life expectancy in 2025, following its first-time achievement of 79 years in 2024. The age-adjusted death rate in 2025 decreased by 4.6 percent compared to the previous year and was approximately 4 percent lower than in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Factors Driving the Decline
A significant contributor to this trend is the substantial reduction in drug overdose deaths. After a dramatic increase over the past decade, with synthetic opioid overdoses alone rising 23-fold between 2013 and 2023, overdose fatalities fell to roughly 70,000 in 2025. This represents a nearly 40 percent decrease in two years, one of the fastest declines for a major cause of death on record.
Researchers attribute this decrease to a combination of factors, including wider distribution of naloxone, shifts in the illicit fentanyl supply, and the loss of vulnerable individuals within the drug-using population. Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau noted that the decline in drug overdoses among younger adults has a measurable impact on overall life expectancy, as deaths at younger ages subtract more years from the national average.
The death rate for Americans aged 25 to 34 fell by about 16 percent in 2024 alone, continuing its downward trend in 2025. Homicides also saw a notable decrease, with the national murder rate falling approximately 13 percent in 2023 and roughly 15 percent in 2024, on track for a further decline of over 20 percent in 2025.
COVID-19 deaths also declined significantly, dropping 37 percent in 2024 and moving from the 10th to the 15th leading cause of death. Encouragingly, age-adjusted death rates fell across all ten leading causes of death in 2024, including heart disease and cancer, indicating a broad improvement in public health across the nation.
Long-Term Gains and Remaining Gaps
Historically, US life expectancy has seen immense gains, particularly due to advancements in sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics that drastically reduced deaths from infectious diseases in the 20th century. Modern progress also includes a 34 percent decrease in cancer death rates since 1991 and decades of falling mortality from heart attacks.
Emerging treatments, such as GLP-1 medications like Ozempic, are showing promise in addressing obesity, which is linked to major causes of death including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease. Adult obesity rates have seen their first sustained decline in a generation, dropping from a record 39.9 percent in 2022 to 37 percent in 2025. Trials suggest these drugs may also reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular death.
Despite these positive trends, US life expectancy of 79 years still trails the average of comparable wealthy nations by 3.7 years. This gap is largely attributed to Americans dying younger, with the US death rate under age 70 nearly double that of peer countries. Significant disparities also exist within the US, with life expectancy varying by state and socioeconomic status.
Steve Lopez is the Editorial Page Editor for News Raise. He covers Health. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards for his reporting and column writing at seven newspapers and four news magazines.
