Chart assignment
U.S. history chart assignment
Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.
Printable worksheet each chart with its source, date and space to write answers
Chart 1 of 1 · Health
How long do Americans live, and how has that changed since 1900?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
A baby born in the US in 2018 could expect to live 78.7 years, up from 47.3 in 1900. The sharpest drop was in 1918, to 39.1 years, during the influenza pandemic. This CDC dataset stops at 2018; later NCHS reports put life expectancy at 78.4 years in 2023 and 79.0 in 2024, after a fall during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How to read this chart
Each point is how long a baby born in that year could expect to live, if death rates stayed as they were that year. It is an average, so it is pulled down a lot when many babies and young people die. Hover or tap a point to read its year and value.
Questions to discuss
- How long could a baby born in 1900 expect to live, and how long one born in the newest year on the chart?
- Find the sharpest drop on the chart. What happened in the United States and the world that year?
- Which changes in the 1900s (clean water, vaccines, antibiotics) do you think added the most years, and why?
Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Death rates and life expectancy at birth (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2018
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