Indpeendent, UK - U.S. residents are now living to the ripe old age of 79 on average, federal officials say — the highest point ever recorded. The CDC announced on Thursday that American expectancy set records in 2024, reflecting the nation's slow but decisive recovery from the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
The milestone also reflects a major drop in drug overdoses, as well as declining death rates from commonly fatal conditions such as heart disease and cancer.
"It’s pretty much good news all the way around," Robert Anderson of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics told AP, though he cautioned that the U.S. still trails behind other developed nations such as Japan, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, and Canada.
"Seventy-nine years is impressive for us, but not so much for most of these other developed countries," he said.
U.S. life expectancy last peaked in 2014 at just under 79 years and then stagnated for a while. Then came Covid, which as of this January has killed an estimated 7.1m people across the world, as well as potentially tens of millions more if indirect deaths are included.
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