Forward-looking · demographic
Published projections
Credible published U.S. demographic mortality projections — kept separate from the observed disease and injury charts elsewhere on this site.
Important: The charts below are not disease-specific forecasts of heart disease, cancer, overdose, suicide, or other causes. CDC/NCHS does not publish an official cause-specific national mortality forecast that matches the observed Data Brief series used on other pages. Where a reliable cause-specific future forecast is not available, this site states that plainly rather than inventing one.
What is available from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 National Population Projections (main series) are all-cause demographic measures: projected life expectancy at birth and projected total deaths. Those model outputs are shown here with projected styling and are not drawn as a continuous extension of any cause-specific observed line.
Vintage & horizon: Census 2023 National Population Projections; deaths file np2023_d3_mid (middle immigration series); life expectancy file np2023_a3. Base population July 1, 2022. Full published horizon to 2100; charts on this page show 2023–2060. Methodology: Census method statement for the 2023 projections.
Recent observed NCHS life expectancy and death counts are plotted separately (markers) so model projections are not mistaken for final vital statistics.
Life expectancy at birth — Census projection vs recent NCHS observations
Years · projected series = Census 2023 NP; markers = NCHS observed
Projected life expectancy is an all-cause demographic summary, not an age-adjusted cause-specific death rate.
Data table & download
Source: Census 2023 National Population Projections; observed LE from NCHS Data Briefs 521/548
Total deaths — Census projected counts vs recent NCHS observations
Death counts (all causes) · not an age-adjusted rate
Projected death counts apply projected survivorship to the projected population. They will not match NCHS final counts year-for-year and must not be read as cause-specific forecasts.
Data table & download
Source: Census 2023 NP projected deaths (middle series); observed counts from NCHS Data Brief 548 context
Assumptions (Census method statement, summarized)
- Cohort-component projections of population by age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, and nativity.
- Mortality projected from historical NCHS death data (methodology uses 1989–2019 patterns; COVID-era 2020 mortality is not treated as the long-run target path — see Census method statement).
- Life expectancy at birth is projected toward long-run UN model life-table targets (male e0 87 and female e0 91 by 2123 in the method statement).
- Projected deaths are model outputs that apply projected survivorship to the projected population — they are all-cause counts, not cause-specific forecasts and not age-adjusted death rates.
- Immigration scenarios exist (high/low/zero); death file used here is the middle (main) series.
How to read this chart
- These are not forecasts of heart disease, cancer, overdose, suicide, or any other cause.
- Projected life expectancy and projected death counts are not interchangeable with NCHS observed age-adjusted cause-specific death rates on other pages.
- Census projected values for years that already have NCHS final observations can differ from those observations; this site plots them in a separate projected series and shows recent NCHS observations separately.
- No published uncertainty intervals are provided in the Census CSV extracts used here; do not invent confidence bands.
- CDC/NCHS does not publish an official cause-specific national mortality forecast comparable to Data Brief observed series; where such forecasts are absent, this site states that plainly.