How long do people really live?
On this page
The average American lifespan was 79.0 years in 2024, 81.4 for women and 76.5 for men. That’s the average at birth, and it counts everyone who dies young. A woman who reaches 65 lives to about 86 on average, and a man to about 83. About 12 of the years Americans live are spent in poor health.
The 79 makes the news every year when the CDC’s report comes out, so people do the subtraction. If the average is 79 and you’re 75, you’ve got four years left. You don’t. A US woman of 75 lives to about 88 on average, and a man to about 87.
What we’d do
Plan around the number for your own age and sex, and treat it as the middle of a wide spread. Nobody can give you a date. Then put your effort into the healthy part of those years. That’s the part the averages hide, and it’s the part your habits move most.
If you remember three things
- Every birthday raises your own average. The 79 includes the people who died as babies and young adults, and by 65 you’ve already outlived them.
- The spread is wide. Of US women now 65, the middle half will live to somewhere between about 80 and 92. For men it’s about 77 to 90.
- Americans spend about 12.4 years in poor health, the widest gap between lifespan and healthy lifespan of 183 countries.
Why is the average at birth the wrong number?
Life expectancy at birth is built from one year of deaths. The CDC takes the death rate at every age in 2024 and works out how long a group of newborns would live if those rates held for their whole lives. A few of that group die as babies, more from accidents in their 20s and 30s, and the rest spread out over their 70s, 80s and 90s. The average of all of them is 79.0.
Once you’re 50, the ones who died young are behind you. Your own average is the average of the people still alive at your age, so it’s higher. A woman of 50 can expect to reach about 84 and a man about 80. At 85 it’s about 92 for women and 91 for men.
A picture from daily life
Think of a crowd leaving a ballgame. The average time people leave includes everyone who walked out at halftime to beat the traffic. If you’re still in your seat in the eighth inning, the halftime crowd tells you nothing about when you’ll go. Your own leaving time is the average of the people still sitting around you.
How long do people my age live?
These come from the 2024 US life table, the newest there is. The age reached is your age plus the years the table gives you.
| Age now | Women reach | Men reach | Women, odds of 90 | Men, odds of 90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 82.4 | 78.1 | 32% | 21% |
| 45 | 83.3 | 79.6 | 32% | 22% |
| 55 | 84.2 | 81.1 | 33% | 23% |
| 65 | 85.8 | 83.4 | 36% | 25% |
| 75 | 88.2 | 86.6 | 41% | 31% |
| 85 | 92.1 | 91.1 | 62% | 55% |
For people who are 65 now, the odds of reaching each age look like this.
Women aged 65
- Reach 8075%
- Reach 9036%
- Reach 1003.4%
Men aged 65
- Reach 8065%
- Reach 9025%
- Reach 1001.5%
Out of 100 girls born into 2024’s death rates, 88 would reach 65, 66 would reach 80, 31 would reach 90 and 3 would reach 100. For 100 boys it’s 80, about half, 20 and 1. Every age from 50 to 85 has its own page, with both sexes and the full spread.
Why do women live longer than men?
At birth the gap was 4.9 years in 2024. Part of it comes from men dying younger, from causes that strike early. In 2023, accidents were the third leading cause of death for men, 9.2% of their deaths, and the sixth for women. Suicide ranked seventh for men and wasn’t in the top 10 for women. Liver disease ranked ninth for men and wasn’t in the top 10 for women either.
The gap shrinks as people get older. At 65 it’s 2.4 years (20.8 more years for women, 18.4 for men), and at 85 it’s about a year. Women also spend more of their extra years unwell. Across 183 countries, women’s gap between lifespan and healthy lifespan was on average 2.4 years wider than men’s. Why do women live longer than men?
How many of those years are healthy?
It’s fewer than you’d hope, and the gap is wider in the US than anywhere else. In a 2024 study of the 183 member states of the World Health Organization, the gap between how long people live and how long they live in good health had grown to 9.6 years worldwide over two decades. The US had the widest gap of all, 12.4 years, and the researchers tied it to a rise in noncommunicable diseases, the long-term kind such as heart disease and diabetes.
That gap moves with habits. In the Harvard cohorts, women with none of five healthy habits at 50 spent 74.8% of their remaining years free of diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Women with four or five spent 83.6% free of them, and lived longer too. For men the share went from 75.3% to 79.0%. Our calculator splits your estimate into those two parts. What is healthspan?
Is it getting better or worse?
It’s getting better, for now. Life expectancy at birth rose 0.6 years from 2023 to 2024, and death rates fell in every age group from 15 to 85 and over. The biggest drop was at 25 to 34, where the death rate fell 15.9% in a single year.
The sceptic says
An average says nothing about me. A table built from 300 million people can’t tell one person when they’ll die.
The table is out of date as soon as it’s printed. It assumes 2024’s death rates last forever.
The reply
That’s right, for one person. It’s why we show the spread and why our calculator gives a range, never a date. The table still beats the 79 everyone uses, and your habits move you within it by years.
That’s right too. If death rates keep falling, today’s babies will live longer than 79 on average, and if they rise, shorter. For an adult planning the next 20 or 30 years, today’s rates are the best guess there is.
Your turn
Look up how long people your age live, then see your own estimate beside the US average, with the healthy years inside it.
6 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
- Tejada-Vera B and others, Deaths: Leading Causes for 2023, National Vital Statistics Reports 74(10), 2025cdc.gov
- Garmany A and Terzic A, Global Healthspan-Lifespan Gaps Among 183 World Health Organization Member States, JAMA Network Open, 2024pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Li Y and others, Healthy lifestyle and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: prospective cohort study, BMJ, 2020pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Li Y and others, Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population, Circulation, 2018pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
