The U.S. death rate dropped to a new low in 2025, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the report, an estimated 3,094,593 people died in the United States in 2025. The death rate was 689.2 per 100,000, a 4.6% decrease from 2024. “The age-adjusted death rate per 100,000 population was 811.1 for males and 582.9 for females,” the report says. Leading causes of death included heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injuries. Other causes of death included suicide, although its rates dropped as well, and influenza and pneumonia. Deaths from the two illnesses increased in 2205, moving to the eighth leading cause of death from the eleventh.
“In 2025, death rates per 100,000 were lowest for children ages 5–14 years (14.0) and highest for people age 85 and older (12,787.5), similar to patterns in 2024,” it notes.
While the nation’s overall death rate decreased in 2025, it increased among young Americans in 2024.
According to a research letter, American children and adolescents were dying at greater rates than those in 16 other high-income countries. “The literature documents a long-standing health disadvantage in the US relative to other high-income countries, with excess deaths due in part to disproportionately high mortality rates. Few studies have quantified the number of excess deaths that have occurred among US infants, children, and adolescents, and none based on mortality data from recent years,” the research letter reads. “Recent years have seen an increase in youth mortality due to homicide, suicide, and drug overdoses and in all-cause mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional study compared US mortality rates among youths aged 0 to 19 years with those of 16 comparison countries, calculated excess deaths for 1999 to 2019, and examined temporal trends through 2021.”
Researchers compared U.S. morality rates among those aged 0-19 in Australia, Canada, Japan, and 13 European countries.
