Heart disease and cancer were again the leading causes of death in the U.S. in 2024, according to a CDC report published Sept. 10, which analyzed 99.9% of 2024 death records as of June 1, 2025.
At the same time, the overall death rate decreased by 3.8% to the lowest it’s been since 2020, from 750.5 per 100,000 in 2023 to 722 per 100,000 in 2024.
One driver behind the decrease could be the decline in deaths from COVID-19, which fell from 76,054 in 2023, to 47,522 in 2024. COVID-19 deaths reached a high of 463,267 in 2021. Another could be the significant drop in the number of drug overdose deaths, from about 110,000 in2023 to about 80,000 in 2024, a shift of almost 27%.
Here are five things to know from the CDC report:
- While the overall death rate decreased by 3.8% between 2023 and 2024, the number of deaths from heart disease increased by about .86% and the number of cancer deaths increased by about 1.66%.
- Death rates decreased between 2023 to 2024 for all age groups except for infants, younger than 1 year old.
Children aged 5 to 14 had the lowest death rate per 100,000 at 14.4 and adults 85 and older had the highest at 13,833.5. - Men had a higher age-adjusted death rate compared to women in 2024 at 844.8 and 613.5 per 100,000, respectively.
- The overall age-adjusted death rate in 2024 was lowest for the multiracial non-Hispanic population at 332.3 per 100,000 and highest for the Black non-Hispanic population at 884 per 100,000.
- Suicide replaced death from COVID-19 as the 10th-leading cause of death in 2024.
Here were the 10 leading causes of death in 2024 with the corresponding number of deaths, according to the CDC:
- Heart disease: 683,037
- Cancer: 619,812
- Unintentional injury: 196,488
- Stroke: 166,783
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 145,612
- Alzheimer’s disease: 116,016
- Diabetes: 94,382
- Kidney disease: 55,070
- Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 52,259
- Suicide: 48,683
Read the full report here.
