ATLANTA — U.S. life expectancy has risen to a new high, nearly 78 years, the government reported Wednesday. The increase is due mainly to falling rates in almost all the leading causes of death.
The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006.
The new U.S. data are from a preliminary report based on about 90 percent of the death certificates collected in 2007. It comes from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. life expectancy has grown nearly one and a half years in the past decade and is at an all- time high.
The U.S. continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in life expectancy. Japan has the longest, at 83 years for children born in 2007, according to the World Health Organization.
Heart disease and cancer together are the cause of nearly half of U.S. fatalities. But their death rates dropped nearly 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively, in 2007. The HIV death rate dropped 10 percent, the biggest one-year decline in 10 years. And the diabetes death rate fell about 4 percent, moving Alzheimer’s disease to the sixth-leading cause of death.
But the nation’s infant-mortality rate rose slightly in 2007, to 6.77 deaths per 1,000 births.
