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Quarterly Mortality Monitoring Report for the U.S. Population

January 2026

Author

Society of Actuaries Research Institute

Quarterly Mortality Monitoring Oversight Group

Executive Summary

The Quarterly Mortality Monitoring Report (QMMR) examines mortality trends in the United States (U.S.) general population. An updated QMMR report is issued every three months, reflecting the latest data. The prior QMMR covered data through June 2025, while this updated report covers data through September 2025.

The results presented in each QMMR report are developed using death count data downloaded from the CDC WONDER database (where “CDC” stands for “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”) and population counts downloaded from the Human Mortality Database (HMD). Because population counts and death counts for the recent past are subject to some uncertainty, the QMMR results should be viewed as estimates rather than fully complete data.

Due to seasonality, monthly death rates are volatile. Therefore, this report focuses primarily on death rates computed across 12-month periods. As explained in the Appendix, age-standardization is used to remove noise imparted by shifts in the population’s age structure across time.

Key findings extracted from an analysis of data through September 2025 are as follows:

  • For the U.S. population considered as a whole, the age-standardized death rate for the 12-month period from October 2024 to September 2025 was 835.3 (per 100,000 persons), compared to 842.7 for the 12-month period from July 2024 to June 2025. This is a decrease of 0.9%.
  • The 0.9% decrease of the rolling 12-month death rate occurred because the death rate for the third quarter (Q3) of 2025 was 3.5% less than the rate for Q3-2024 (which dropped out of the 12-month rolling period).
  • For each of the broad age groups examined in this report (ages 0-19, 20-49, 50-59 and 60+), the 2025-Q3 mortality rate was less than the corresponding rate for 2024-Q3. In percentage terms, the 20-49 age group experienced the largest improvement – a 5.6% drop in the Q3 mortality rate (relative to Q3 of 2024).

Along with this report, an updated version of the QMMR Excel/VBA workbook has been released. The updated workbook contains data from 2000 through September 2025, disaggregated by sex, single age, and 14 broad categories of mortality causes. The workbook provides several tools to facilitate the analysis of mortality trends, including interactive, parameterized graphs that make it easy to visualize trends in the data.

Materials

2025Q3 Quarterly Mortality Monitoring Report

2025Q3 QMMR Excel/VBA Workbook

QMMR Excel/VBA Workbook Instructional Video

Acknowledgments

The SOA would like to thank the members of the Quarterly Mortality Monitoring Oversight Group for their support, guidance, direction, and feedback throughout the project:

  • Sam Gutterman, FSA, MAAA, FCAS, FCA, HONFIA, CERA
  • Ed Hui, FSA
  • Tom Kukla, FSA, MAAA
  • Larry Stern, FSA, MAAA

 

At the SOA:

  • Barbara Scott, Senior Research Administrator
  • Kara Clark, FSA, MAAA, Senior Research Actuary
  • Patrick Wiese, ASA, Lead Modeling Researcher

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