(usafacts.org)
Women are expected to outlive men by 5.3 years.Updated March 21, 2025 by the USAFacts team
In the United States, women are expected to outlive men by 5.3 years. This longevity gap, which was two years in 1900, grew to nearly eight around 1980 before dropping to its current level.
What are the average lifespans for men and women born in the US?
Women are expected to outlive men by 5.3 years as of 2023.
Life expectancy at birth by sex, 1900–2023
Line chart showing the life expectancy at birth by sex in the U.S. Males have a lower life expectancy, and after gradually rising for decades, life expectancy for both sexes have not fully recovered from a decline seen during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Women
81.1
Men
75.8
Source: Centers for Disease Control and PreventionGet the dataDownload imageDownload SVG
In 2023, the life expectancy for men born in the United States was 75.8. For women, it was 81.1.
Lifespans had been rising across the board in the 20th century — in 1900, the average life expectancy was 46.3 for men and 48.3 for women. That rose throughout the century, apart from a 12-year drop in 1918 during the Spanish Flu pandemic, peaking for men in 2014 (76.3 years) and for women in 2019 (81.4).
When COVID-19 became a leading cause of death in 2020, men lost an average of 2.8 years and women 2.1. The averages have mostly bounced back; men have since recovered 2.3 years and women have recovered 1.8 years.
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Interestingly, the longevity gap shrinks among older men and women — a 65-year old man in 2023 was expected to live another 18.2 years, until the age of 83.2, and a woman of the same age could expect another 20.7 years, until 85.7.
Why this smaller gap? More men die before age 65, dragging men’s life expectancy at birth down. Thirty-one percent of men who died in 2023 were below 65, compared to 19% of women. This may have some to do with how men and women die.
Thirty-one percent of men who died in 2023 were younger than 65.
Percentage of 2023 deaths by age and gender
A bar chart showing the percentage of deaths below and above the age of 65 by gender. More men die before 65.
0–64
65+
years old
Men
31%
69%
Women
19%
81%
Source: Centers for Disease Control and PreventionGet the dataEmbed Download imageDownload SVG
What are the leading causes of death for men and women?
Heart disease, cancer, and accidents were the three leading causes of death in the US in 2023. All three killed men at higher rates than women: 457 of every 100,000 men died from these, compared to 289 women.
Expanding this to look at the 15 overall leading causes of death, only one — Alzheimer’s disease — killed women at a higher rate after adjusting for age. Men were nearly four times as likely as women to die by suicide, and more than twice as likely to die from an accident or from Parkinson’s.
Men die at a higher rate than women for all but one leading cause of death.
Age-adjusted deaths per 100,000 people, top 15 overall causes of death, 2023
A split bar chart of age-adjusted death rates by gender for the top 15 overall causes of death in 2023.0.050.0100.0150.0200.0
Heart disease
126.8
204.4
Cancer
124.1
165.3
Accidents
38.3
87.1
Stroke
38.1
39.3
Chronic lower respiratory diseases
32.0
35.4
Alzheimer’s
31.7
21.7
Diabetes
17.3
28.4
Kidney disease
11.1
15.6
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
9.5
16.8
COVID-19
9.9
14.7
Suicide
5.9
22.7
Influenza and pneumonia
9.3
12.8
Hypertension
9.3
10.8
Septicemia
8.9
11.1
Parkinson’s
6.3
14.0
Women|
Men|
Sorted by overall crude death rate.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and PreventionGet the dataEmbed Download imageDownload SVG
Wondering how you fit in? The Social Security Administration’s life expectancy calculator forecasts how much longer a person can expect to live based on birth year and gender.
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