Story highlights Heart disease and cancer are the top two killers of Americans

The death rate declined 1% for 2014, the CDC reports

The infant mortality rate is down 2.3%

(CNN) The leading causes of death remained the same from the year before: Heart disease is the No. 1 killer, followed by cancer, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and infant mortality decreased 2.3%.

But there is good news among the CDC's grim statistics. The American death and infant mortality rates have hit a record low. Adult deaths for 2014 declined 1%. And life expectancy increased for black men, Hispanics and non-Hispanic black men, according to the report.

The bad news: Life expectancy decreased for non-Hispanic white women.

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Next, in order of deadliness, are chronic lower respiratory diseases such as emphysema, accidents such as car accidents and drug overdoses, stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes, the flu and pneumonia, kidney disease, suicide, septicemia, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, hypertension, Parkinson's and lung diseases caused by external agents.

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