Data and methods
Every number on DeathUS comes from a public source, mostly the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the CDC. Here is each source, the year it covers, and what we do with it.
Life expectancy
From the United States Life Tables, 2024 (NVSR Vol. 75, No. 5), Tables 1-3 for 2024. The figures describe a large group of people, never one person. The tools never predict when anyone will die.
How the life tables work
A life table gives the chance of dying within a year at each age. From it we work out how many more years people of a given age and sex live on average, the chance of reaching a later age, and the age by which half of them have died.
These are period life tables. They assume the death rates of 2024 hold for the rest of a person's life. If death rates keep falling, people will live a little longer than the tables say.
State life expectancy
From the U.S. State Life Tables, 2022 (NVSR Vol. 74, No. 12), tables XX-1 to XX-3, for 2022, brought up to 2024. The adjustment is ours, not an official NCHS figure.
How we bring them up to date
NCHS publishes state life tables a few years later than national ones. To put states on the same footing as the national figures, we scale each state's death rate at every age by how much the national rate at that age changed between 2022 and 2024. Each state keeps its own pattern, brought up to date.
Deaths by state
NCHS provisional counts by state of residence for 2025 (Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Week Ending Date and State (total_deaths, By Year / By Month)). Rates per 100,000 people use U.S. Census Bureau population estimates and are not adjusted for age.
About provisional counts
Provisional counts can change slightly when the final data comes out.
The death counter
An estimate, not a live feed. It spreads the 2025 total over the year.
How the counter runs
It takes the 2025 total for the place you choose and spreads it over the year using each month's average share of deaths from 2023 to 2025, so it runs faster in winter than in summer. Within a month it assumes deaths happen at an even pace. Each day starts at midnight Eastern Time.
Causes of death
By age: final NCHS data for 2024 (CDC WONDER, Underlying Cause of Death, 2018-2024, Single Race (final data, year 2024)). By state: final 2024 data from the CDC's Stats of the States: death data maps by cause (heart disease, cancer, accidents, stroke, ...) pages.
How causes are ranked
Causes by age are ranked the way NCHS ranks them, using its list of rankable causes. The state pages cover 15 major causes.
Funeral costs
National medians from the National Funeral Directors Association, 2023 General Price List Study, the funeral industry's own survey of price lists.
More on the estimator
Single-price options name their source next to the price. For prices at real funeral homes in a state, the estimator links to Cheap Funeral.
Download the data
You can reuse our tables. CDC data is in the public domain. Our adjusted figures are free to use under CC BY 4.0, with credit to DeathUS.
Corrections
If a number looks wrong, see the About page for how to tell us. Guides and tool pages show the date they were last checked.