There’s some good news for American lifespans: In July, preliminary CDC data suggested that life expectancy in the U.S. is on track to reach a record high while death rates hit a historic low. 

According to the report, there were about 689 deaths for every 100,000 people in 2025 — the lowest rate recorded since mortality rate tracking began. The news comes at a time when the buzzword “longevity” has become synonymous with wellness, and as the U.S. centenarian population is expected to explode over the next few decades. At first glance, this news might sound encouraging after years of headlines highlighting the reverse trend, that life expectancy was falling. But public health experts who have been studying mortality rates over the last couple of decades aren’t exactly optimistic this trend reflects any positive health advancements in American public health — or that these numbers can be sustained.

“This is welcome news, but should be taken with a grain of salt,” Steven Woolf, a physician and a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, told Salon. One reason, Woolf pointed out, is that the current estimates are only “slightly better” than in 2019, when there were an estimated 715.2 deaths per 100,000 people. “Although this signals that the U.S. has rebounded from the devastating losses that occurred during the pandemic, returning to 2019 conditions hardly puts us out of the woods.” 

Death rates, particularly among young Americans, remain high. According to research published earlier this year, “excess deaths” have surged among people between the ages of 25 and 44 when compared to mortality trends of young people from the early 2000s. The overall death rate of children has increased, too. “This means that children in the U.S. today are less likely to survive to adulthood and young adults are less likely to reach middle age than in prior years,” Woolf said.

A third reason for tempering our enthusiasm about the data is that U.S. life expectancy remains far below that of other high-income countries. 

“Yes, we have rebounded from the pandemic, but other countries rebounded earlier and have since achieved greater gains in life expectancy,” Woolf said. “Even before the pandemic, more than 60 countries had achieved higher life expectancy than the United States.”

A recently published study in JAMA Health Forum found that 46 percent of all U.S. deaths among people under the age of 65 would not have occurred if the U.S. had the age-specific death rates of its peer countries. That means that one out of every two U.S. deaths under 65 is likely avoidable. One of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Jacob Bor, called the lack of willingness to address this issue “a national scandal.”

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a person might live based on a country’s mortality rates. As it stands, the 2025 life expectancy calculation wasn’t included in the report since it’s still technically provisional data. But in 2024, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 79.0 years — a historic high, compared to 78.4 years in 2023. But compared to other Western democracies, as researchers have emphasized, there’s room to catch up. For example, in Italy, life expectancy at birth has increased from 79.6 in 2000 to 83.4 years in 2019. In Switzerland, life expectancy has increased from the late ‘70s in the mid-2000s to an average of 84.3 years today.

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“It does not surprise me that we’re starting to see some improvements,” Marc Cohen, co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center at UMass Boston, told Salon. “But we’re surely still falling short of other Western democracies.”

Cohen said one notable difference between the U.S. and how Western European countries approach health and wellness is how governments spend their money. The United States spends much more on actual medical care, Cohen said, in terms of curing illnesses — but much less on preventative care. 

“The Europeans end up spending more on social care and less on medical care,” he said. Many social determinants of health influence longevity, he added, such as access to food, housing, and transportation. In Western European countries, those services are frequently part of the social safety net. “So they don’t need to spend as much on curing illness; they spend a lot more on getting services in place to prevent illness,” he said. The United States, he said, is the exact opposite. 

Another reason, Cohen said, the U.S. has a lower life expectancy is because of access to health insurance. “When people have access to medical care through insurance, they tend to undertake activities that can help longevity, like better preventive care, better management of chronic and disabling conditions,” Cohen said. He added that due to recent Medicaid cuts, which is the primary health insurance program for low-income Americans, he’s concerned life expectancy rates will decline again in the future. “Once all of these cuts kick in, you’ll see a turnaround going in the wrong direction again, even if everything else stays the same, and that is the only major change; you will see declines.” 

That’s in part because there is a strong correlation between wealth and longevity in America. 

“It has always been the case that the poor, on average, live shorter lives than the rich, but the gap has widened over time,” Woolf said. “Income inequality and the wealth divide in America have widened dramatically, and so has the gap in longevity and health between rich and poor.”

One of the most stark examples is longevity entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, a tech millionaire who has reportedly spent $2 million per year trying to reverse aging. Johnson recently made headlines announcing he was diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis. While the disease itself isn’t fatal, as STAT News reported, it is linked to an increased risk of stomach cancer.

“For proof that better health is possible, look to the 60 countries that are outperforming the United States; they have shown that a better way exists to protect the health of their populations,” Woolf said. “The problem in the United States is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will.”

One recent report estimated that working-class Americans can expect to die seven years earlier than wealthy ones. In an era of pay-to-access wellness, it checks out. A 2022 report by the Global Wellness Institute found that greater consumer spending on wellness is associated with a slight increase in life expectancy. Still, wealth doesn’t always guarantee a longer life.

“Rich Americans die earlier than rich people in other countries, because systemic problems affecting the health of Americans affect us all,” Woolf said. “Your bank account can’t protect you if you are breathing polluted air or rely on a dysfunctional health care system.”