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Americans are now one-third less likely to die from cancer at the same ages as Americans in 1990

How has the risk of dying from cancer changed in the United States? To understand this, we can look at national cancer death rates in the United States.

The gray line shows the crude rate, which is the rate of deaths from cancer per 100,000 people. It has risen between 1950 and 1990 and has fallen slightly since then.

However, cancer death rates rise sharply with age, and the age of the US population has increased since 1950, so we would expect cancer death rates to rise for that reason alone.

What if we adjust for the increased age of the US population? The red line, the age-standardized rate, shows this. It shows the cancer death rate if the age structure of the US population was held constant throughout.

This shows a slight rise until 1990 and then a significant decline; rates have fallen by one-third. This means Americans are now one-third less likely to die from cancer at the same ages as Americans in 1990.

"Several factors" seems very vague as a reason for a sudden change in 1990. Your point about H. Pylori fits... although that is specific to stomach cancer.

This post shows the vast majority of the decline is in lung cancer. Did 1990 see a marked change in attitude to tobacco? bsky.app/profile/scie...

But yes, the decline in breast and prostate cancer also starts then, which probably is due to better screening and treatment. Interesting. Other cancers seem to have nothing special happening in 1990.

Seems like immunotherapy should be in that mix. A game changer.

You can read much more about this topic on our recently revamped page on cancer:

You can also explore the trends for other countries in this interactive chart:

The chart below shows a historical view of reported cancer death rates since 1950 in the United States. You can see several major changes: Lung cancer rose and fell greatly. Colorectal & stomach cancer had been the two most common cancer causes of death, but both have declined greatly over time.