In 2023, the latest year with final CDC life tables by race, non-Hispanic Black Americans could expect to live 74.0 years at birth. COVID-19 took 3.6 years of Black life expectancy between 2019 and 2021; 2023 was the strongest year of the recovery, up 1.2 years from 2022 and back above the 2006 level of 73.1 for the first time since the pandemic began. The recovery is not finished: 74.0 is still 0.8 year short of 2019.
Black life expectancy at birth, 2018 to 2023
Single-race NCHS estimates. The pandemic years 2020 and 2021 erased 3.6 years; the recovery reached 74.0 in 2023, still 0.8 year below 2019 (our arithmetic on the published values).
Years of life expectancy at birth
Source: CDC/NCHS, United States Life Tables, 2023, Table 19 (single-race panel)
Life expectancy at birth by group and sex, 2023
Every group NCHS publishes, in years, sorted by the published value.
| Group | Both sexes | Male | Female |
|---|---|---|---|
Source: CDC/NCHS, United States Life Tables, 2023, Table A.
The story stops at 2023 because the CDC has published 2024 life expectancy for the total population only (79.0 years); life tables by race for 2024 are not yet released. The newest provisional data show the work left to do: in 2025 the age-adjusted death rate for Black Americans, 869.0 per 100,000, was the highest of any group. That is a death rate, not a life expectancy figure.
Methodology
Life expectancy values are NCHS estimates of expected years of life at birth, adjusted by NCHS for race and Hispanic-origin misclassification on death certificates. Rows labeled single race (2018 to 2023) and bridged race (2006 to 2020) in the CSV use different race-classification standards that NCHS notes are not completely comparable; we never chart them as one series. Year-over-year changes stated in the text are our subtraction of published values, shown to one decimal as NCHS prints them. Every figure was fetched from the cited primary document on July 28, 2026 and independently re-verified against the same document before publication.
Cite this page
APA
Black Health. (2026). Life Expectancy for Black Americans. Black Health Data Hub. https://blackhealth.org/data/black-life-expectancy/
BibTeX
@misc{blackhealth_blacklifeexpectancy_2026,
title = {Life Expectancy for Black Americans},
author = {{Black Health}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://blackhealth.org/data/black-life-expectancy/},
note = {Accessed July 29, 2026}
}
Direct link
https://blackhealth.org/data/black-life-expectancy/
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License: Data compiled from public CDC NCHS sources, public domain