U.S. Death Rate Hits Century-Low, but Racial Gaps Persist, CDC Data Show

The headline number is real, and it's worth a moment: the United States recorded its lowest death rate in more than a century last year. But the CDC report behind that number also contains enough caveats to keep any clinician honest.

According to a report reviewed by CNN, <cite index="7-5">there were about 689 deaths for every 100,000 people in the U.S. in 2025, the lowest rate recorded in more than a century of tracking.</cite> <cite index="7-6">The age-adjusted rate has fallen 22% since 2021, landing about 4% lower than it was just before the pandemic in 2019.</cite>

Life expectancy figures aren't in this release yet. <cite index="10-3">The mortality data is provisional and subject to change as the full set of death records are processed, but a record-low death rate would most likely suggest a record-high life expectancy, demographic experts say.</cite>

What's driving the drop? A lot of it comes down to overdoses. <cite index="10-6">Overdose deaths are still high, about 70,000 people died from an overdose in 2025, preliminary CDC data shows, but experts say that sharp declines probably played a large role in bringing the age-adjusted death rate down.</cite> <cite index="10-4,10-5">The top causes of death followed longstanding patterns: heart disease led with nearly 695,000 deaths, followed by cancer with nearly 623,000. Unintentional injuries, which includes drug overdoses, ranked third.</cite>

<cite index="10-12">The new CDC report shows that death rates decreased for all age groups in 2025, compared with 2024.</cite> That's genuinely broad-based progress. But it doesn't mean the system is working evenly.

<cite index="7-11">Death rates among Black and American Indian people are more than twice as high as they are for Asian people, the new CDC report shows.</cite> <cite index="10-13,10-14">Death rates also vary dramatically between men and women: there was an age-adjusted rate of 811 deaths per 100,000 men, compared with a rate of 583 deaths per 100,000 women in 2025.</cite>

Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus at the Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health and a family medicine physician, welcomed the trend but put it in context. <cite index="10-10,10-11">The mortality rate flatlined around 2010 in the U.S. even as it kept declining in peer nations, driven by an alarming increase in deaths among young and middle-aged Americans that was not seen in other high-income countries.</cite> <cite index="10-8">"The systemic issues affecting the health of Americans are still claiming lives," he said.</cite>

Woolf told CNN that policy shapes a lot of what looks like individual fate. <cite index="7-9">"A lot of the reasons why Americans die at higher rates from these diseases than people in other countries is the conditions they're living in, and those are shaped by public policy," he said.</cite>

That's a point worth holding onto right now. <cite index="8-2,8-3">Around 4 million Americans dropped out of ACA insurance marketplaces in their first month of coverage this year, a drop of over 16%, based on numbers released by HHS. Meanwhile, less than half of Americans say they can afford quality healthcare, according to a Gallup survey cited by CBS News.</cite> A record-low death rate measured in 2025 data does not yet reflect what happens to people who lost coverage in 2026.

Woolf's framing is the right one for anyone reading this number at face value. <cite index="10-17,10-18,10-19">"Mortality rates are a good starting point for getting a snapshot for what our health situation looks like," he 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."</cite>

The CDC's full 2025 mortality report, with finalized life expectancy calculations, is expected later this year.

Sources cited:
- CNN Health (https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/02/health/us-death-rate-record-low-cdc-report-longevity)
- Paging America, The Week in Health Care News (https://www.pagingamerica.org/p/july-1-2026-the-week-in-health-care)