More Women And Young People Are Getting Cancer Than Before, New Report Shows

Topline

The cancer burden in the United States is shifting towards women and younger people, a new American Cancer Society study released Thursday shows, with disease rates in one group—women aged 50 to 64—surpassing those of men for the first time.

Key Facts

Cancer rates in women under 50 have soared when compared to their male counterparts, the study shows, and are now 82% higher than the rates seen in men, up from 51% in 2002.

The shift can be partially blamed on increasing trends for breast and thyroid cancers, the study says, which make up almost half of all cancers in people under 50 and mostly impact women.

At the same time, rates of common cancers like melanoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and prostate are decreasing in men under 50.

The lifetime probability of being diagnosed with an invasive cancer is now only slightly higher for men (39.9%) than for women (39%), the research shows, much lower than the 1.6% higher chance men had of being diagnosed than women in 1992.

The cancer burden is also shifting by age—new diagnoses in adults aged 65 and older decreased from 61% in 1995 to 59% in 2021, while people aged 50 to 64 and people younger than 50 saw increases in the cancer patient population.

Cancer rates are also on the rise among adolescents aged 15 to 19, but have declined in children ages 14 and below, while mortality rates for both groups have dropped significantly (by 63% and 70%, respectively) since 1970.

Overall, the cancer mortality rate declined by 34% between 1991 and 2022 in the United States, but incidents rates continue to rise in common cancers like breast, pancreatic, uterine corpus, melanoma, liver and some oral cancers.

Surprising Fact

Among those younger than 65 years, lung cancer incidence was higher in women than in men in 2021 for the first time ever, the study shows.

Big Number

2,041,910. That’s how many cancer diagnoses are expected in 2025, according to the American Cancer Society. An estimated 988,660 of those cases will be in women, 294,220 of which are expected to die. Roughly 323,900 men are expected to die of cancer in 2025.

Tangent

The study also looked at cancer inequalities by race. Native Americans see rates of kidney, liver, stomach and cervical cancers two to three times higher than white people, and Black people are twice as likely to die of prostate, stomach and uterine corpus cancers when compared to white people. Black people are also 50% more likely to die from cervical cancer, which is preventable, the American Cancer Society says.