Health Balance
Which ages saw death rates fall most?
How much the US death rate fell for each adult age group between 2023 and 2024.
Death rates in the United States fell between 2023 and 2024 for every age group from one year old upward, except children aged 5 to 14, whose rate did not change significantly. The biggest drop was not among the oldest Americans but among adults aged 25 to 34, whose death rate fell by almost a sixth in a single year.
See the numbers
| Age group | Fall in death rate, 2023 to 2024 |
|---|---|
| 15–24 | −12.9% |
| 25–34 | −15.9% |
| 35–44 | −9.9% |
| 45–54 | −6% |
| 55–64 | −4.4% |
| 65–74 | −2% |
What it shows
Each bar is the percentage fall in deaths per 100,000 people in that age group. For adults aged 25 to 34 the rate went from 148.1 to 124.5, a fall of 15.9%. For ages 15 to 24 it fell 12.9%, from 76.8 to 66.9. The falls shrink with age: 2.0% for people aged 65 to 74.
Across the whole population, the age-adjusted death rate fell 3.8%, from 750.5 to 722.1 per 100,000, and life expectancy at birth rose 0.6 year to 79.0 years. In all, 3,072,666 deaths were registered in 2024, 18,298 fewer than in 2023.
What it leaves out
A percentage fall is not a count. Younger adults die far less often than older ones, so a large percentage drop at 25 to 34 is fewer deaths than a small drop at 75 to 84. The chart compares how fast each rate moved, not where most deaths happen.
The data brief does not explain the drop by age. It does report that the age-adjusted death rate from unintentional injuries, a category that includes drug overdoses and traffic deaths, fell 14.4% between the two years, the largest fall among the ten leading causes. That is one likely contributor for younger adults, but the brief does not attribute the age-group changes to it.
These are population figures, not a guide to anyone's own health. For questions about your health, talk to a doctor or another qualified clinician.
Sources and method
All figures come from Mortality in the United States, 2024, NCHS Data Brief No. 548, published January 2026 by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, using final death certificate data from the National Vital Statistics System. Age-specific rates are deaths per 100,000 people in each age group; we show the percentage change the brief reports for each group from 2023 to 2024.
And the answer is → Adults aged 25 to 34, whose death rate fell 15.9% in a single year.
