According to a preliminary report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans are now living longer than ever.

Life expectancy rates in the US have reached an all-time high, the CDC’s report says, with those born in 2005 expected to live for nearly 78 years.

Researchers have followed the increase over the past decades: in 1995, life expectancy in the US was 75.8 years; in 1950, it was 69.6 years. Now, those born in 2005 can expect to live some 77.9 years.

The report issued from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is based on 99 percent of death records from all 50 states and District of Columbia for 2005. The same report shows that death rates from the three leading causes of death –heart disease, cancer and stroke – are declining.

In 2005, the US death rate dropped to an all time low of less than 800 deaths per 100,000. Life expectancy for whites remained the same in 2005 as in 2004, at 78.3, while for blacks, life expectancy was 73.2 years in 2005, up from 73.1 years in 2004.

Women continue to live longer than men however, with a life expectancy rate of 5.2 years more than men, the figure is the smallest since 1946, the CDC notes.

The infant mortality rate increased from 6.79 per 1,000 births in 2004 to 6.89 in 2005. The increase was not thought to be statistically significant. The leading causes of infant death are birth defects and low birth weight. The third leading cause of infant death in the United States is sudden infant death syndrome.

The leading causes of death in the US were heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidental injuries, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, flu and pneumonia, kidney disease, septicemia, suicide, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, high blood pressure, Parkinson’s and homicide.

Mortality rates for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease continued to increase, the CDC noted in its report.

The death rate from heart disease dropped from 217 deaths per 100,000 in 2004 to 210.3 in 2005. The death rate from cancer fell from 185.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2004 to 183.8 in 2005. The death rate from stroke fell from 50 deaths per 100,000 in 2004 to 46.6 in 2005, according to the report.

“If death rates from certain leading causes of death continue to decline, we should continue to see improvements in life expectancy,” CDC statistician Hsiang-Ching Kung, who worked on the report, said in a statement.