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Life expectancy rates in the United States are al an all-time high, with people born in 2005 projected to live for nearly 78 years, a new federal study finds. The finding reflects a continuing trend of increasing life expectancy that began in l955, when the average American lived to be 69.6 years old. By l995, lire expectancy was 75.8 years and by 2006, it had risen to 77. 9 years, according to the report released Wednesday. This is good news, said report co-author Donna Hoyert, a health scientist at the national Center for Health Statistics. Its even better news that it is a continuation of trends, so it is a long period of continuing improvement. Despite the upward trend, the United States still has lower lire expectancy than some 40 other countries, according to the U. S. Census Bureau. The country with the longest lire expectancy is Andorra at 83.5 years, followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore. Much of the increase owes to declining death rates from the three leading causes of death in the country-heart disease, cancer and stroke. In addition, in 2005, the U. S. death rate dropped to an all-time low of less than 800 deaths per l00, 000. Dr. David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School Medicine. Said, News that lire expectancy is increasing is, of course, good. But the evidence we have suggests that there is more chronic disease than ever in the U. S. | 
