U.S. Death Rates Drop Dramatically

And life expectancy is going up, new government figures show

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

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WEDNESDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) -- Americans are living longer than ever, and the gender gap for life expectancy is decreasing.

The good news comes out of preliminary U.S. government findings released Wednesday that also showed the year 2004 had the sharpest drop in the number of deaths in about 60 years, down almost 50,000.

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"The most striking aspect of the data this year was the intensity or volume of the decreases," said Arialdi Miniño, a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the lead author of the report. "This is the largest single-year decrease in the raw numbers of deaths that we've seen since the 1940s."

The report, Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2004, is based on analysis of about 90 percent of the death certificates from 2004. The full report will be out in May.

As the population grows, experts generally expect the actual number of deaths to go up slightly. This year's data was a surprise. "We're scratching our heads a bit," Miniño confessed.

But after finding no errors in the data, the research team now suspects that the drop is due to decreases in deaths from heart disease, stroke and cancer, the leading killers. It may also have to do with the fact that 2004 was a relatively mild flu season.

In any event, the downward blip is unlikely to become a trend, Miniño said.

According to the report, the life expectancy of Americans in 2004 was 77.9 years, the highest ever. And women lived an average of 80.4 years; men, 75.2 years. That gap of 5.2 years is the smallest difference between the sexes since 1946.

That bit of news met with applause from experts.

"This is great news that people are living longer, and we want to make sure they are living as healthy as they should," said Dr. Eileen Callahan, an assistant professor of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. "There's only so much the medical system can do. People have to start taking care of themselves with exercise, appropriate diet and good medical care."

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