Are Americans Living Longer Under Donald Trump? What the Data Shows - Newsweek

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announced on Thursday that he's gotten new data that shows a positive change in America's longevity, two years after President Donald Trump took office.

Americans are living longer today than they were at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with federal data showing life expectancy reached 79 years in 2024, the highest level ever recorded in the United States. But whether that improvement can be credited to Trump remains a matter of debate, since longevity trends are often shaped by long-term factors including public health, medical advancements, drug overdose rates and demographics rather than any single policy.

Americans are living longer than they did several years ago, but longevity gains have slowed considerably compared with much of the 20th century, and the United States continues to lag behind many other wealthy nations.

Speaking at the RNC midterm convention, Kennedy highlighted a series of health-related trends that he said reflected improvements in Americans' well-being.

"Preliminary data that I received two days ago from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates we have reversed a 30-year decline in longevity," Kennedy said.

Newsweek reached out to the Health and Human Services via email for the data that Kennedy referenced, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

He praised Trump for keeping the promises he made to Kennedy when they joined forces on the campaign after Kennedy dropped out of the presidential race. Kennedy, who spearheaded the "Make America Healthy Again" movement, said real food sales were up eight percent in 2025 and that Americans were eating less processed food. Data from the CDC showed that between 2021 and 2023, on average, 53 percent of calories consumed by adults each day were from ultra-processed foods, down from about 56 percent in 2017 and 2018. The Organic Trade Association found a 7 percent increase in sales of organic food in 2025.

He also praised Trump's administration for reducing the obesity rate in the United States, dropping it by 7 percent after decades of increases. According to Gallup, the U.S. adult obesity rate fell from a peak of 39.9 percent in 2022 to 36.4 percent in 2026, a decline of 3.5 percentage points, or about 8.8 percent relative to the peak. [wellness.goalbmi.com]

Over the past three decades, Americans have generally lived longer, though the pattern has been uneven.

In the mid-1990s, life expectancy in the United States was around 75 years. By 2000, it had climbed to roughly 76.8 years. The trend continued through the early 2000s, reaching approximately 78.7 years by 2010. Growth then began to slow, with life expectancy hovering around 78.8 to 78.9 years during much of the decade.

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted that long-running pattern. More than 1 million Americans died from COVID-19, and life expectancy plunged to around 76.4 years in 2021, representing one of the steepest modern declines on record.

Since then, life expectancy has rebounded sharply. Federal figures show it reached 78.4 years in 2023 before increasing again to 79.0 years in 2024. According to the CDC, the improvement reflected falling death rates across multiple categories, including heart disease, cancer and unintentional injuries such as drug overdoses.

Andrew Stokes, a researcher at Boston University, told the Associated Press at the time that the data reflects a lasting improvement in America's epidemic of drug overdoses.

The gains mark a significant recovery from the pandemic's impact, but they do not necessarily signal the beginning of a new era of rapid longevity growth. Researchers note that U.S. life expectancy has largely stagnated since the mid-2010s relative to peer nations. Countries such as Japan, Switzerland, Australia and Canada continue to report higher average life expectancies than the United States.

Another notable feature of American longevity is the persistent gap between men and women. CDC data show women had a life expectancy of 81.4 years in 2024, compared with 76.5 years for men, a difference of nearly five years.

Data for 2025 hasn't been released yet, but life expectancy in the United States was on track to reach a record high. A report from the CDC found there were about 689 deaths for every 100,000 people in the United States, the lowest rate recorded in more than a century that the CDC has been tracking the data.

For policymakers, longevity trends are often treated as a broad measure of national health. Rising life expectancy can indicate progress against major causes of death, while stagnation or decline may suggest deeper problems involving chronic disease, substance abuse, economic inequality or access to health care.

As the Trump administration and its allies point to improving health statistics, the available data support the claim that Americans are living longer today than they were several years ago. Federal figures show life expectancy is at a record high and mortality rates have declined.

However, Kennedy's characterization of a "30-year decline in longevity" is not reflected in historical federal life expectancy statistics. U.S. life expectancy generally rose between the 1990s and the mid-2010s, although the pace of improvement slowed considerably compared with previous decades. The more recent decline occurred during the late 2010s and accelerated sharply during the pandemic, before rebounding in subsequent years.

Health experts have attributed the recent increase in life expectancy to a range of factors, including lower COVID-19 mortality, declining overdose deaths, improvements in heart disease treatment and reductions in certain other causes of death.

Researchers caution that life expectancy is a population-wide measure influenced by many years of social, economic and medical developments. Because mortality data often lag by months or years, determining the impact of specific government policies can be difficult.

Whether those gains ultimately represent a lasting shift, however, remains uncertain. Public health experts say it will take several more years of data to determine whether the recent increases are part of a sustained trend or primarily a recovery from the extraordinary disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Gray R. Thomas