By The Survivors Club
August 19, 2009

Americans are living nearly three months longer... and that means life expectancy in the United States has reached an all time high, according to new information from the National Center for Health Statistics.

The good news is due largely to falling death rates from heart disease, cancer and HIV.  Average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006.  Over the past decade, life expectancy in the US has increased almost one and a half years.

Men and women are living longer, according to the new data, but women still outlast men by an average of five years.  (In 2007, average life expectancy was 80.4 years for women and 75.3 years for men).  Twenty years ago, the survival gap was much greater: Women outlived men by nearly eight years.

The USA still trails some 30 countries in life expectancy.  Japan has the longest life expectancy — 83 years for children born in 2007 -- according to the World Health Organization.

“The most noteworthy aspect about all this is not just that people are living longer but living better,” Dr. Gary Kennedy tells The New York Times.  Kennedy is director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y.  “At the same time, people are living a longer active lifespan. Seniors are healthier, more active and economically better off than they ever have been.”