What is the average life expectancy in the US?
On this page
79.0 years at birth in 2024: 81.4 for women and 76.5 for men. But that’s the wrong number to plan around once you’re an adult. A man who reaches 65 can expect about 18 more years and a woman about 21, which takes them to about 83 and 86.
What we’d do
Forget 79 once you’re grown up. Look up the figure for your exact age and sex, which is always higher, and then see how your own habits move it. The age lookup does the first and the calculator the second.
Why is everyone quoting 79?
The figure at birth is the one in the news every year when the CDC publishes it, so it’s the one people remember. It’s the right number for babies born in 2024. For a 50-year-old it’s misleading, because it counts everyone who dies young, from infants to people in their 30s. Each year you live, you pass ages where some people born the same year as you died, and your own average goes up.
The simple version
Think of a marathon’s average finish time. It includes everyone who dropped out at mile 5. If you’re still running at mile 20, your own finish time looks very different from the average for everyone who started.
The numbers
| At birth | Years left at 65 | Age reached from 65 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everyone | 79.0 | 19.7 | about 85 |
| Women | 81.4 | 20.8 | about 86 |
| Men | 76.5 | 18.4 | about 83 |
Life expectancy rose 0.6 years from 2023 to 2024, by 0.3 for women and 0.7 for men. The gap between the sexes narrowed to 4.9 years. Heart disease, cancer and unintentional injuries were the three leading causes of death, and suicide replaced COVID-19 as the tenth. If you’re struggling, you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time of day or night.
How far it has come
In 1980 the doctor James Fries pointed out in the New England Journal of Medicine that the average length of life had risen from 47 to 73 over the 20th century, while the longest lives hadn’t got any longer. Most of the gain came from fewer people dying young. The same thing explains why the average for an adult today sits well above 79, since the early deaths that pull the at-birth figure down are already behind you.
What the average leaves out
The table applies 2024’s death rates at every age, so it’s a snapshot of today rather than a forecast of medicine in 2060. It also averages smokers and marathon runners together. The calculator starts from the same table and adjusts it for five habits from a big US study, and the floor test checks the strength and balance that the average can’t see.
4 sources
- National Center for Health Statistics, Mortality in the United States, 2024, Data Brief 548cdc.gov
- National Center for Health Statistics, United States Life Tables, 2024, National Vital Statistics Reports 75(5)cdc.gov
- Fries JF, Aging, natural death, and the compression of morbidity, New England Journal of Medicine, 1980pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline988lifeline.org
