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Life expectancy in U.S. hits record high

Oct 08, 2014, 5:12 PM EDT
A woman and a man sit bundled up in their coats as they ride the Street Car on St. Charles Avenue as temperatures in the area plummeted below freezing on January 7, 2024 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Sean Gardner/Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that the U.S. life expectancy rate has hit an all-time high of 78.8 years. Girls born in 2012 will outlive boys born in the same year by nearly 5 years. Live Science details more about the research:

Life expectancy at birth refers to the average number of years that a group of infants born in the same year are expected to live. This number is estimated based on death rates of the population that year. It is an average number and includes the rates of people who die in infancy, as well as those who die at a very old age. [Infographic: Global Life Expectancy]
The rate of death in the United States reached a record low of 732.8 per 100,000 people in 2012, decreasing 1.1 percent from 2011.
“Life expectancy at birth represents the average number of years that a group of infants would live if the group was to experience throughout life the age-specific death rates present in the year of birth,” the report states.
Meanwhile, life expectancy for people age 65 in 2012 was more than 19 years, or about 20 ½ years for women and nearly 18 years for men.
From 2011 to 2012, age-adjusted death rates declined for eight of the 10 leading causes of death, with a 2.4 percent increase reported in suicide, according to the CDC report, the highest point for the suicide rate in 25 years.
That figure has been increasing since 2000 and "it's really hard to say why," said Robert Anderson, who oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention branch that issued the report today.

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