The average lifespan of a woman in the United States is 81.4 years, based on 2024 data from the CDC. That’s 4.9 years longer than the average for men, who live to about 76.5. While those numbers represent the national average, your actual life expectancy depends heavily on where you live, your income, and your health behaviors.
Why Women Outlive Men
The gap between male and female lifespans exists in virtually every country on earth, which points to biology as a core factor. Estrogen appears to play a protective role in heart health for much of a woman’s life. Men are 50% more likely to die of heart disease than women, and lower estrogen levels are considered part of the reason. Women also tend to have stronger immune responses, which helps fight off infections but can also make them more prone to autoimmune conditions later in life.
Behavior widens the gap further. Women generally follow healthier diets, drink less alcohol, smoke less, and are more likely to follow health recommendations. Men show a peak in risk-taking behavior during young adulthood, sometimes called the “accident hump,” though this contributes relatively little to the overall gap. The bigger behavioral drivers are the chronic patterns: diet, substance use, and engagement with preventive healthcare over decades.
Income Changes Life Expectancy by a Decade
The national average of 81.4 years masks an enormous range. A landmark study published through the National Institutes of Health found that women in the bottom 1% of income had an expected age of death of 78.8 years, while women in the top 1% could expect to live to 88.9. That’s a 10.1-year gap driven by income alone. The pattern holds across the income spectrum: higher income correlates with longer life at every level, not just at the extremes.
Living Longer Doesn’t Mean Living Healthier
One of the most important distinctions is the difference between total lifespan and healthy lifespan. Women live longer than men, but they also spend more years in poor health. Globally, the gap between total life expectancy and health-adjusted life expectancy has been growing, reaching 9.6 years on average by 2019. Women fare worse on this measure than men by about 2.4 years.
In the U.S., this pattern is especially pronounced. American women’s health-adjusted life expectancy remained essentially flat even as total life expectancy crept upward, meaning the extra years gained were largely years spent managing chronic illness or disability. U.S. women spend roughly 13.7 years of their lives in less-than-full health, about 32% higher than the global average for women. Living longer, in other words, doesn’t automatically mean living well.
What COVID Did to the Numbers
Female life expectancy in the U.S. dropped sharply during the pandemic, falling well below the 2019 level of about 81 years. Recovery has been slow. While several western European countries, including France, Belgium, and Sweden, bounced back to their pre-pandemic life expectancy levels relatively quickly, the United States experienced sustained losses. The pandemic amplified a pre-existing pattern of rising mid-life mortality in America, with increasing death rates among people under 60 contributing significantly to the decline. By 2024, women’s life expectancy had climbed back to 81.4, finally surpassing the pre-pandemic baseline.
Your Odds of Reaching 90 or 100
Based on Social Security Administration actuarial tables, a woman born today has roughly a 28% chance of reaching age 90. That’s more than one in four. The odds of making it to 100 are much slimmer but not negligible: about 2.2%, or roughly one in 45. These are population-level probabilities and don’t account for individual factors like family history, lifestyle, or access to healthcare, all of which can shift the odds significantly in either direction.
Where Life Expectancy Is Headed
Global life expectancy for women is projected to increase by about 4.2 years between 2022 and 2050, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study published in The Lancet. Men are expected to gain slightly more (4.9 years), which would narrow the gender gap somewhat. These projections assume continued progress against infectious disease and improvements in treating chronic conditions, though metabolic risks like obesity and environmental threats could slow the gains. For women in high-income countries who already live into their 80s, the increases will likely be more modest than in lower-income regions where there’s more room to improve.