Life expectancy reaches highest ever

ATLANTA — U.S. life expectancy in 2007 rose to a new high: nearly 78 years, the government reported Wednesday.

Life expectancy in the United States has been on the rise for a decade, increasing 1.4 years — from 76.5 years in 1997 to 77.9 in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The increase is due mainly to falling death rates in almost all the leading causes of death. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months longer than for those born in 2006.

The new U.S. data is 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 CDC.

The United States continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in estimated life span. Japan has the longest life expectancy: 83 years for children born in 2007, according to the World Health Organization.

Doctors said that not only is life span increasing, but more important, the "active" life span is increasing as well.

"The most noteworthy aspect about all this is not just that people are living longer but living better," said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. "Seniors are healthier, more active and economically better off than they ever have been."

The CDC report found that the number of deaths and the overall death rate dropped from 2006, to about 760 deaths per 100,000 people from about 776. The death rate has been falling for eight straight years and is half of what it was 60 years ago.

Heart disease and cancer together cause nearly half of U.S. deaths. The heart-disease death rate dropped nearly 5 percent in 2007, and the cancer death rate nearly 2 percent, the report said. The HIV death rate dropped 10 percent, the biggest one-year decline in 10 years.

The diabetes death rate fell about 4 percent, allowing Alzheimer's disease to surpass diabetes to become the sixth leading cause of death.

The nation's infant-mortality rate rose slightly in 2007, to 6.77 infant deaths per 1,000 births, but the rise was not statistically significant.

Information from The New York Times is included in this report.