How long do women and men live in the United States?
Life expectancy at birth. Women have outlived men in every year on record, but the size of the difference has moved a long way.
Women
81.4
years
Men
76.5
years
Difference
4.9
years longer for women
Figures for 2024, the most recent year in the series.
The shaded band is the gap, measured in years. It was widest in 1968 at
8.1, narrowest in 2010 at
4.8, and stood at 4.9 in 2024.
Series runs 1960–2024, 65 years with both sexes reported.
What this number counts
Period life expectancy at birth. It takes the death rates observed at every age during a single year and asks: if those exact rates never changed, how long would a newborn live on average? It is a summary of one year of mortality, expressed in years.
Sex is as recorded in national vital statistics, which report male and female only. The figure covers the whole resident population — all races, all states, all income levels — combined.
What this number does not say
It is not a forecast. A girl born this year is not predicted to live exactly this long. Death rates have fallen for over a century, so a cohort actually followed through life has generally done better than its period figure implied.
It does not say why. The gap reflects differences in causes of death, behaviour, occupation and biology in proportions this page does not measure and does not estimate.
It is an average over very different groups. National life expectancy hides large differences by state, income and race, some of which are wider than the sex gap.
A sharp fall is a mortality shock, not a trend. Because the measure uses one year of death rates, a single severe year moves it sharply and then it moves back.
The most recent value is an estimate and gets revised. Compare editions, not just years.
Source
World Bank World Development Indicators. Compiled by the World Bank from UN agencies, the ILO and national statistical sources. Indicators SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN · SP.DYN.LE00.MA.IN.