Gen Z Is Bucking a Terrible Mortality Trend
As millennials enter middle age, their mortality rates remain elevated. Things are looking better for the younger generation.
Gen Z on the upswing.
Photographer: Nick David/Digital Vision/Getty Images
These are in many ways tough times for young adults in the US. The job market is turning against them, in part because employers seem to be shunting some of the work they used to give to new hires to ChatGPT and its ilk. Housing is impossibly expensive for them in much of the country. Those who aren’t US citizens, or just look as if they might not be, are — based on past age-group data on immigrant detentions and court cases — the prime targets of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
Still, at least young adults in the US are dying at a slower pace. The 2024 mortality numbers collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics won’t be officially finalized for a while yet, but I’ve been checking the provisional updates every week, and the totals have stopped changing, so I think its safe to say that last year’s US death rate for ages 25 through 34 was the lowest since 2015.