The global average age of death is roughly 71 to 73 years, depending on the year measured. The World Health Organization pegged global life expectancy at 72.5 years in 2020, then saw it dip to 71.4 years in 2021 due largely to the pandemic. In the United States, the number is higher: life expectancy reached an all-time high of 79.0 years in 2024.
What “Average Age of Death” Actually Means
Life expectancy at birth is the standard measure, and it represents the average age at which people in a given population die. That single number, though, hides enormous variation. A country where many infants die will have a low average age of death even if the adults who survive childhood routinely live into their 70s. Research from Stanford has shown that declines in infant mortality are the single biggest factor in narrowing the gap between people who die young and people who live long lives. In wealthy nations, dropping child mortality rates over the past century are a major reason the average has climbed so dramatically.
This is why the global figure of 71 to 73 years doesn’t mean most people die in their early 70s. In countries with low child mortality, the majority of deaths cluster well above the average. In countries where children still die from preventable infections, the average gets pulled down sharply.
The U.S. Compared to Other Countries
At 79.0 years in 2024, U.S. life expectancy hit a record high after rebounding from pandemic-era losses. That number rose 0.6 years from 2023 alone. Still, the U.S. lags behind comparable wealthy nations by a significant margin. The average life expectancy across similar high-income countries was 82.7 years in 2024, putting the U.S. about 3.7 years behind.
The countries with the longest lives tell a consistent story. Switzerland leads at 84.2 years, followed closely by Japan at 84.1 and Sweden at 83.8. The gap between these countries and the U.S. reflects differences in chronic disease burden, access to healthcare, income inequality, and racial health disparities within the U.S. population. It’s not simply a matter of medical technology; social and economic conditions play an equally large role.
Why Women Live Longer Than Men
Across virtually every country, women outlive men. The reasons are both biological and behavioral. Estrogen appears to offer some protection against heart disease during a woman’s reproductive years, which is one reason men develop cardiovascular problems earlier and more often. Men also carry a genetic disadvantage: they have only one X chromosome, so any harmful mutation on that chromosome has no backup copy to compensate. Women, with two X chromosomes, have a built-in buffer against X-linked genetic problems.
The differences start before birth. Male fetuses are less likely to survive in the womb, for reasons that aren’t fully understood. Boys also experience developmental disorders at higher rates than girls, some of which can shorten lifespan. Even body size may play a small role. Across many species, larger animals tend to die younger than smaller ones, and while the effect in humans is uncertain, it may work slightly against men. On top of all this, the part of the brain responsible for judgment and impulse control develops more slowly in young men, which contributes to higher rates of accidents and risk-taking behavior in adolescence and early adulthood.
What People Actually Die From
Heart disease is the world’s leading killer, responsible for 13% of all deaths globally. It primarily strikes in middle age and beyond, and reductions in heart disease mortality have been the biggest driver of rising life expectancy in wealthy countries. Stroke accounts for another 10% of global deaths and shares many of the same risk factors: high blood pressure, smoking, poor diet, and inactivity.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (long-term lung damage, often from smoking) causes about 5% of deaths worldwide. Lower respiratory infections, including pneumonia, claimed 2.5 million lives in 2021 and remain especially dangerous for young children and older adults. COVID-19, which was responsible for 8.8 million deaths in 2021, temporarily reshaped global mortality patterns and was the direct cause of the drop in life expectancy from 72.5 to 71.4 years during that period.
The pattern is clear: diseases that kill older adults raise the average age of death when they’re reduced, while causes that kill younger people, like infections and injuries, reduce the spread of uncertainty around when any individual person will die.
Lifespan vs. Healthspan
Living longer doesn’t necessarily mean living well for all of those years. The WHO tracks a separate measure called healthy life expectancy, which estimates how many years a person can expect to live in good health before significant disability or disease sets in. Globally, that number was about 62.8 years in 2020 and dropped to 61.9 in 2021. That means the average person spends roughly the last 9 to 10 years of life dealing with a meaningful health burden.
This gap between total lifespan and healthy lifespan is one reason public health experts increasingly focus not just on adding years but on adding quality to those years. The countries with the highest life expectancies tend to also have smaller gaps between total and healthy life expectancy, suggesting that the same factors driving longer lives (better nutrition, more physical activity, stronger social safety nets) also keep people healthier for more of those years.
How Much the Average Has Changed
The most striking thing about the average age of death is how recently it changed. For most of human history, life expectancy hovered between 25 and 35 years, dragged down heavily by infant and childhood mortality. A person in ancient Rome who survived to adulthood could expect to live into their 50s or 60s, but the average was low because so many died young.
The transformation happened in stages. Clean water, sanitation, and vaccines slashed child mortality in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Antibiotics and improved surgical techniques pushed the numbers higher through the mid-1900s. More recently, better management of heart disease and stroke has been the primary engine of gains in wealthy nations. The result is a world where the global average has more than doubled in roughly 150 years, even accounting for the setback caused by the pandemic.