- Americans' Life Expectancy Hits New Highs: In 2024, the U.S. life expectancy reached a record 79 years, reflecting a significant rebound from pandemic declines and falling death rates across many categories.
- Declining Mortality Rates Benefit the Life Insurance Industry: Lower-than-expected mortality rates mean policyholders are living longer, which improves the profitability and financial strength of life insurers.
- Stable Life Insurance Premiums and Evolving Risk Assessment: Despite economic pressures, term life premiums remain steady, and insurers are adopting faster, more accessible underwriting methods like accelerated programs.
- Coverage Gaps and Misconceptions Persist: Over 100 million Americans lack adequate life insurance, partly due to misconceptions about costs and reluctance to plan for death, highlighting ongoing gaps in coverage.
- Future Trends and Challenges in Life Expectancy and Insurance Market: Demographic shifts, healthy living programs, and policy debates will influence future mortality trends and the role of life insurance in wealth transfer and protection.
Americans are living longer than ever. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows U.S. life expectancy reached 79 years in 2024, the highest mark in the nation’s history. The milestone follows a dramatic rebound from the pandemic years, when life expectancy dropped to just under 76.5 years in 2021. Now, as death rates fall across nearly every category, the life insurance industry finds itself in an unusual position: mortality is improving faster than actuaries predicted, and the ripple effects are reshaping how insurers price policies and pay claims.
The CDC’s data, released late last week, shows age-adjusted death rates fell 3.8% from 2023 to 2024. Heart disease remains the leading cause of death, but its rate dropped roughly 3% for the second consecutive year. Deaths from unintentional injuries, a category that includes drug overdoses, plummeted more than 14%. COVID-19, once the nation’s third-leading killer, fell out of the top ten entirely. Preliminary figures for 2025 suggest the trend is holding, with around 3.05 million deaths recorded so far, potentially marking another slight improvement.
Similar patterns are emerging elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, the Continuous Mortality Investigation announced that death rates in 2025 reached a record low, nearly 7% below the 2015-2024 average. Mortality fell across all age groups compared to the prior year. For actuaries and insurers tracking these trends, the message is clear: people are dying later than the models assumed they would.
For life insurers, lower-than-expected mortality translates directly into profits. When policyholders live longer, death benefit payouts get pushed further into the future, improving the present value of premiums collected. The industry paid record levels of claims in 2021, when pandemic-era deaths peaked. But as excess mortality fades, insurers are seeing their mortality experience return to, and in some cases beat, pre-pandemic baselines.
That financial strength is reflected in the company’s results. New York Life recently announced it will pay an estimated $2.78 billion in dividends to participating policyholders in 2026, the largest payout in the company’s 180-year history. The mutual insurer also maintains the highest possible financial strength ratings from all four major agencies. Other major carriers have reported similar resilience, with Fitch Ratings maintaining a neutral sector outlook for North American life insurers despite macroeconomic headwinds.
For consumers shopping for coverage, the mortality improvement picture is mixed. Term life premiums have remained remarkably stable over the past several years, partly because insurers had already priced in the pandemic’s impact and partly because competition keeps rates in check. A healthy 30-year-old can still secure $500,000 in coverage for around $25-$30 per month. The life insurance cost breakdown varies by age, health class, and policy type, but the broader trend is that pricing has not spiked despite inflationary pressures elsewhere in the economy.
The industry is also evolving in how it assesses risk. Accelerated underwriting programs, which allow applicants to skip medical exams, have expanded dramatically. Some carriers now approve face amounts of up to $5 million without requiring bloodwork, relying instead on electronic health records, prescription databases, and algorithmic risk models. These programs have made buying coverage faster and easier, contributing to broader access, though critics note that less rigorous underwriting could lead to adverse selection over time.
Despite the improving mortality picture, the fundamental coverage gap persists. More than 100 million Americans remain uninsured or underinsured. Surveys consistently show that roughly half of consumers think life insurance costs far more than it actually does, overestimating premiums by 3 to 6 times the actual price. That misconception, combined with procrastination and the discomfort of contemplating death, leaves millions of families financially exposed. Finding the best life insurance for your situation starts with getting accurate quotes and understanding what coverage actually costs.
The generational shift in the market is worth watching. Millennials and Gen Z are forming families and buying homes later than previous generations, which delays when they perceive a need for coverage. But the coming decades will see an unprecedented wealth transfer, with an estimated $124 trillion passing between generations by 2048. Life insurance will play a central role in that transition, both as a protection mechanism and as a wealth planning tool.
Industry observers note that behavior-driven insurance models are gaining traction. John Hancock’s Vitality program, which rewards policyholders for healthy activities with premium discounts, recently marked its tenth anniversary. Programs like these attempt to align insurer and policyholder incentives: the healthier you are, the less you pay, and the longer you live, the more profitable you become for the company. Whether such programs meaningfully change mortality outcomes remains debated, but they signal a broader push toward personalization.
Some uncertainty lingers. While the CDC’s numbers are encouraging, public health experts caution that structural challenges remain. The U.S. still ranks below dozens of other developed nations in life expectancy. Infant mortality showed no significant change in 2024. Obesity rates continue to climb, carrying long-term implications for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. And political debates over healthcare access, insurance subsidies, and public health funding could influence mortality trends in ways that are difficult to model.
For now, the data points are favorable. Fewer people died in 2024 than in 2023. Drug overdose deaths are falling. COVID is no longer a leading cause of death. Heart disease treatments are improving. And life insurers, who stake their business models on predicting how long people will live, are finding that their customers are outliving expectations. Whether that trend continues depends on factors ranging from medical innovation to policy decisions. Still, the record-setting life expectancy numbers suggest that, at least for the moment, Americans have more time than they thought.
