Death rates for seniors fell by more than 20% during the 20 years before COVID-19 as chronic afflictions killed fewer people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.

The federal agency found that mortality rates for Americans 65 and older dropped from 5,169 deaths per 100,000 people in 2000 to 4,073.8 per 100,000 in 2019, or 21.2%, with a slower rate of decline from 2009 onward.

The CDC found that age-adjusted death rates fell from 2000 to 2019 at varying rates for heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, and influenza and pneumonia.

Among women, death rates fell for all ages and racial groups.

Death rates for men aged 75 and older also declined steadily.

But death rates for all men aged 65 to 74 remained unchanged from 2012 through 2019. For Black men in the age group, the death rate increased by 0.3% annually over that period.

Death rates were also higher for seniors living in rural areas compared to those in urban areas.

The CDC noted that the findings build on pre-pandemic life expectancy studies that found deaths of despair increasing as older adults lived longer.  

“These trends are attributed to a rise in drug- and alcohol-related and suicide deaths, along with a slowing of decline in deaths due to cardiovascular diseases,” CDC researchers Ellen A. Kramarow and Betzaida Tejada-Vera wrote in the report.

According to the researchers, their analysis of death rates for older adults before the pandemic “contributes to a comprehensive picture of U.S. mortality trends and provides context for changes that have occurred since 2020.”

“Older adults have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, with about 75% of all COVID-19-related deaths since 2020 occurring in people age 65 and older,” Ms. Kramarow and Ms. Tejada-Vera wrote.

• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.