In the wake of all the negative health news of the past year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a bit of good news for the country’s aging population: Life expectancy has risen in recent years.
A recent CDC report shows that, in 2019, the average life expectancy for U.S. residents rose to 81.4 years for women and to 76.3 years for men, according to a post on the American Hospital Association’s website. At the same time, the overall death rate fell by 1.2% in 2019, though the rate fell more significantly for white men and women – 1% and 1.4 % – than for Black men and women 0.9% and 1.2%.
And, while the top 10 leading causes of death in 2019 remained the same, overall mortality from several of those causes of death declined, according to the post. Flu and pneumonia saw the most significantly decline in mortality, with a 17.4% drop.
The other declines were not nearly as large, but are significant in their own right, including a 2.1% decline in the suicide rate, a 3.8% drop in deaths from chronic lower respiratory disease and a 2.7% decline in deaths from unintentional injuries.
