US death rate falls to record low

In a new report published in the Vital Statistics Rapid Release, researchers from the National Center for Health Statistics analyzed provisional death certificate data for deaths that occurred among U.S. residents between January and December 2025. The data in the analysis accounts for over 99% of deaths that occurred in 2025.

Overall, 3,094,593 deaths occurred in the United States in 2025. The age-adjusted death rate was 689.2 deaths per 100,000 people, the lowest recorded death rate in U.S. history. Since 2021, when the U.S. death rate spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, the death rate has fallen by 22%.

Death rates were lowest among children ages five to 14 (14 deaths per 100,000 people) and highest among people ages 85 and older (12,787.5 deaths per 100,000 people). Between 2024 and 2025, death rates decreased for all age groups and for both men and women.

However, even with declining death rates, there continues to be significant disparities. American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander people were the only groups that saw an increase in death rates between 2024 and 2025. Black Americans also continue to have the highest death rates of all racial/ethnic groups, which was 1.3 times higher than the overall rate.

"Life expectancy is going to be affected a lot by what's happening at younger age groups more than at older age groups," said Mark Mather, an associate VP at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit that aims to use demographic data to improve well-being. "As we see a dramatic decline in drug overdose among younger adults, that will have a more measurable impact on life expectancy at older ages and the overall life expectancy of the population."​

However, Steven Woolf, director emeritus and senior advisor at the Virginia Commonwealth University Center of Society and Health, said that while a record-high U.S. life expectancy would be "encouraging," it would not be satisfying since "systemic issues affecting the health of Americans are still claiming lives."

Although advances in public health and medicine have helped death rates fall in the United States and other wealthy nations over the last century, the U.S. mortality rate has largely remained stagnant since 2010 while it has continued to decrease in other peer countries.

"We saw an alarming increase in deaths from in young and middle-aged Americans that was not experienced in other high-income countries, and that basically offset the progress that was being made in lowering death rates for older Americans," Woolf said. "Most of those problems that were responsible for the flatlining have not been resolved, and they’re continuing to claim lives."

In general, "[m]ortality rates are a good starting point for getting a snapshot for what our health situation looks like," Woolf said. "I'll hasten to emphasize that there's more to health than mortality. It's not just how long we live, it's the quality of our life."