ATLANTA, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- For the third year in a row, the average life expectancy for a newborn is 78.8 years, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC's 2014 mortality report also showed infant mortality in the United States has hit a historic low of 582.1 infant deaths per 100,000 live births. The ten leading causes of death, overall and for infants, also remained the same from 2013 to 2014.
The numbers are based on statistics compiled by the agency on the 2.6 million Americans whose deaths were registered in the country.
In 2014, researchers estimated women would live an average of 81.2 years and men live an average of 76.4 years, numbers that remained unchanged.
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The top ten causes of death in 2014 were the same as in 2013. Differences came, however, in the number of deaths due to unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer's disease and suicide increasing, as the number of deaths from heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, diabetes, and influenza and pneumonia went down. The number of people dying of kidney disease stayed the same.
The 2.3 percent decline in infant deaths, from 596.1 per 100,000 in 2013 to 582.1 per 100,000, is a new record low, according to researchers.
The declines in infant mortality are good news, Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, told The Guardian, but "U.S. infant mortality rates -- like much of its health statistics generally -- have not kept pace with advances in other high-income countries."
"It's the same set of reasons infant mortality is dropping in all industrialized countries, not something unique to the U.S.," Wolf said.
