Heart disease killed more: the CDC’s final 2024 data count 683,491 heart disease deaths against 619,876 cancer deaths, and together the two causes accounted for 42.4% of all US deaths. Cancer leads among adults ages 45 to 64 (25.4% of deaths) and among Hispanic and Asian Americans, while the American Cancer Society projects 626,140 cancer deaths in 2026 even as the 5-year survival rate for all cancers reached a record 70%.
What Kills More People in the US 2026 – Introduction
What kills more people in the US is a question with a clear answer and a few important twists. Heart disease has held the top spot for decades, with cancer a close second, and the two together claim well over four in every ten American deaths. The rankings come from death certificates, and they change by age, sex and race in ways that headline totals hide.
2026 brought fresh official data. The CDC published final 2024 leading-cause figures in September, the American Cancer Society released its yearly projections, and the American Heart Association updated its own statistics. Deaths from both diseases have fallen sharply in rate terms, yet raw counts stay high because the population is older. This report compares the two killers by year, age, sex, race and cause, one data table at a time.
Interesting Facts About Cancer and Heart Disease Deaths in the US 2026
US DEATHS BY LEADING CAUSE, 2024 (each █ = 20,000)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Heart disease ██████████████████████████████████ 683,491
Cancer ███████████████████████████████ 619,876
Accidents ██████████ 197,449
Stroke ████████ 166,852
Chronic lung diseases ███████ 145,643
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Interesting Fact | 2026 Data |
|---|---|
| Heart disease deaths, 2024 | 683,491, or 22.2% of all deaths |
| Cancer deaths, 2024 | 619,876, or 20.2% of all deaths |
| Combined share of all US deaths | 42.4% |
| All US deaths, 2024 | 3,072,666 |
| Projected US cancer deaths, 2026 | 626,140 (American Cancer Society) |
| Projected new cancer cases, 2026 | 2,114,850 |
| All cardiovascular disease deaths, 2023 | 915,973 (American Heart Association) |
| 5-year survival, all cancers combined | 70%, a first |
Source: CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 75, No. 7, September 22, 2026; American Cancer Society, Cancer Statistics 2026; American Heart Association, 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update.
The first four rows show the main ranking. Heart disease caused 683,491 deaths in 2024, 22.2% of the total, and cancer caused 619,876, or 20.2%. Together they made up 42.4% of the 3,072,666 deaths recorded that year. Accidents ranked third with 197,449 deaths, far behind the top two, so this is a two-disease contest.
The last four rows add the forward view. The American Cancer Society expects 626,140 cancer deaths in 2026 among 2,114,850 new diagnoses, and the 5-year survival rate for all cancers hit 70% for people diagnosed from 2015 to 2021. The American Heart Association counts 915,973 deaths from all cardiovascular disease in 2023, a broader category than the CDC’s heart disease line. The definitions matter when comparing numbers.
Leading Causes of Death in the US 2026 | CDC Final 2024 Rankings
SHARE OF ALL US DEATHS BY CAUSE, 2024 (each █ = 1 point)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Heart disease ██████████████████████ 22.2%
Cancer ████████████████████ 20.2%
Accidents ██████ 6.4%
Stroke █████ 5.4%
Chronic lung █████ 4.7%
Alzheimer disease ████ 3.8%
Diabetes ███ 3.1%
Kidney disease ██ 1.8%
Liver disease ██ 1.7%
Suicide ██ 1.6%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Rank | Cause of Death | Deaths, 2024 | Share of Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Heart disease | 683,491 | 22.2% |
| 2 | Cancer | 619,876 | 20.2% |
| 3 | Accidents | 197,449 | 6.4% |
| 4 | Stroke | 166,852 | 5.4% |
| 5 | Chronic lower respiratory diseases | 145,643 | 4.7% |
| 6 | Alzheimer disease | 116,022 | 3.8% |
| 7 | Diabetes | 94,445 | 3.1% |
| 8 | Kidney disease | 55,081 | 1.8% |
| 9 | Chronic liver disease | 52,274 | 1.7% |
| 10 | Suicide | 48,824 | 1.6% |
Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Deaths: Leading Causes for 2024, National Vital Statistics Reports, September 22, 2026.
The top two causes stand alone. Heart disease took 683,491 lives and cancer 619,876, while the third cause, accidents, took only 197,449. The ten leading causes together accounted for 70.9% of all deaths. Stroke ranked fourth at 166,852, chronic lung disease fifth at 145,643 and Alzheimer disease sixth at 116,022.
The bottom of the list shows smaller shifts. Diabetes caused 94,445 deaths, kidney disease 55,081 and liver disease 52,274, and suicide moved up to tenth with 48,824. COVID-19 fell to fifteenth with 31,426 deaths, down 37% from 49,932 in 2023. NCHS notes that lung cancer, which is not ranked separately, would place sixth if it were, ahead of Alzheimer disease.
Heart Disease vs Cancer Death Trends 2026 | 2023 to 2024 Changes
DEATHS FROM HEART DISEASE AND CANCER (each █ = 20,000)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Heart disease 2023 █████████████████████████████████▌ 680,981
Heart disease 2024 ██████████████████████████████████ 683,491
Cancer 2023 ██████████████████████████████▌ 613,352
Cancer 2024 ███████████████████████████████ 619,876
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Trend Metric | Heart Disease | Cancer |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths, 2023 | 680,981 | 613,352 |
| Deaths, 2024 | 683,491 | 619,876 |
| Share of deaths, 2023 | 22.0% | 19.8% |
| Share of deaths, 2024 | 22.2% | 20.2% |
| Age-adjusted death rate, 2024 | 201 per 100,000 | 182 per 100,000 |
| Rate change, 1999 to 2024 | Down 23% | Down 7% |
| Cancer deaths change, 2023 to 2024 | Up 1.1% |
Source: CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 75, No. 7; CDC NCHS Data Brief No. 548, January 29, 2026; USAFacts analysis of CDC data, 2026.
Both death counts rose in 2024, but only slightly. Heart disease deaths went from 680,981 to 683,491, and cancer deaths rose 1.1% from 613,352 to 619,876. Shares of all deaths edged up too, from 22.0% to 22.2% for heart disease and from 19.8% to 20.2% for cancer, because total deaths fell. The overall age-adjusted death rate fell 3.8% in 2024, and rates dropped for each of the ten leading causes.
Rates tell a more hopeful story than counts. Heart disease killed 201 people per 100,000 in 2024 against 182 for cancer. Since 1999 the heart disease death rate has fallen 23% while the cancer rate has fallen only 7%, which means the gap between the two causes is narrowing in rate terms. The population is also older, so even falling rates produce flat or rising counts.
Cancer vs Heart Disease Deaths by Age 2026 | Which Disease Kills at Each Age?
SHARE OF DEATHS BY AGE GROUP, 2024 (each █ = 2 points)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ages 45-64 Cancer █████████████ 25.4%
Heart disease ██████████ 20.6%
Ages 65+ Heart disease ████████████ 24.0%
Cancer ██████████ 20.1%
Ages 85+ Heart disease ██████████████ 27.3%
Cancer ██████ 11.9%
Ages 25-44 Cancer █████ 9.8%
Heart disease █████ 9.7%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Age Group | Cancer | Heart Disease | Leading Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ages 1-9 | 10.6% (2nd) | 3.4% (5th) | Unintentional injuries |
| Ages 10-24 | 5.6% (4th) | 2.8% (5th) | Unintentional injuries |
| Ages 25-44 | 9.8% (3rd) | 9.7% (4th) | Unintentional injuries |
| Ages 45-64 | 25.4% (1st) | 20.6% (2nd) | Cancer |
| Ages 65 and older | 20.1% (2nd) | 24.0% (1st) | Heart disease |
| Ages 85 and older | 11.9% | 27.3% (1st) | Heart disease |
Source: CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 75, No. 7, Deaths: Leading Causes for 2024, September 22, 2026.
The answer flips with age. For adults ages 45 to 64, cancer is the leading cause of death at 25.4% of deaths, with heart disease second at 20.6%. After 65, heart disease takes over at 24.0% against 20.1% for cancer. Among those 85 and older, heart disease reaches 27.3% of deaths and cancer falls to 11.9%. Cancer is a disease of midlife in the death-share data, heart disease of old age.
Younger groups show a different picture. For ages 25 to 44, cancer (9.8%) and heart disease (9.7%) are nearly tied in third and fourth place behind unintentional injuries, which accounts for 33.6% of deaths in that range. Among children ages 1 to 9, cancer is second at 10.6% while heart disease ranks fifth at 3.4%. Accidents lead every age under 45, and the two diseases only dominate once people pass middle age.
Cancer vs Heart Disease Deaths by Sex and Race 2026 | CDC Data
HEART DISEASE SHARE MINUS CANCER SHARE OF DEATHS, 2024 (each █ = 0.5 points)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Males heart 23.6% cancer 20.4% ██████▌ heart ahead
Females heart 20.8% cancer 20.0% ██ heart ahead
Black heart 22.8% cancer 19.1% ███████▌ heart ahead
White heart 22.7% cancer 20.4% ████▌ heart ahead
Hispanic heart 18.3% cancer 19.6% ◄██▌ cancer ahead
Asian heart 20.2% cancer 23.5% ◄██████▌ cancer ahead
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Group | Heart Disease Share | Cancer Share | Leading Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Males | 23.6% | 20.4% | Heart disease |
| Females | 20.8% | 20.0% | Heart disease |
| Black | 22.8% | 19.1% | Heart disease |
| White | 22.7% | 20.4% | Heart disease |
| Hispanic | 18.3% | 19.6% | Cancer |
| Asian | 20.2% | 23.5% | Cancer |
| American Indian and Alaska Native | 17.6% | 15.4% | Heart disease |
| Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander | 23.4% | 20.6% | Heart disease |
Source: CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 75, No. 7, Deaths: Leading Causes for 2024, September 22, 2026.
Heart disease leads for both sexes, but the gap is much wider among men. Heart disease caused 23.6% of male deaths against 20.4% for cancer, while for women the shares were 20.8% and 20.0%, nearly even. Cancer’s share is almost the same for both sexes. Among racial groups, heart disease leads for Black Americans (22.8%), White Americans (22.7%), Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander people (23.4%) and American Indian and Alaska Native people (17.6%).
Two groups changed the ranking. Cancer led among Hispanic Americans in 2024 at 19.6% against 18.3% for heart disease, the only change in a group’s top cause from 2023, when heart disease was first. Asian Americans have the highest cancer burden of any group, with cancer causing 23.5% of deaths and heart disease 20.2%. Race data for several groups are underreported on death certificates, so the smaller groups call for caution.
Cancer Deaths in the US 2026 | American Cancer Society Projections
PROJECTED US CANCER DEATHS AND NEW CASES, 2026 (each █ = 25,000)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
New cases, men ████████████████████████████████████████████ 1,094,070
New cases, women ████████████████████████████████████████▌ 1,020,780
Deaths, men █████████████ 327,290
Deaths, women ████████████ 298,850
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Cancer Metric | 2026 Data |
|---|---|
| Projected new cases | 2,114,850, about 5,800 a day |
| Projected deaths | 626,140, about 1,720 a day |
| Deaths, men | 327,290 |
| Deaths, women | 298,850 |
| 5-year survival, 2015-2021 diagnoses | 70%, a first |
| Cancer death rate decline since 1991 | 34% |
| Deaths averted since 1991 | 4.8 million |
| Survivors, 2025 | 18.6 million, rising to 26 million by 2040 |
Source: American Cancer Society, Cancer Statistics 2026, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, January 13, 2026; National Cancer Institute survivor estimates.
The American Cancer Society projects 2,114,850 new cases and 626,140 deaths in 2026, or about 5,800 diagnoses and 1,720 deaths each day. Men account for 1,094,070 cases and 327,290 deaths, women for 1,020,780 cases and 298,850 deaths. The cancer death rate has fallen 34% since its 1991 peak, which averted 4.8 million deaths, mostly because of lower smoking, earlier detection and better treatment.
Survival is the other half of the story. For people diagnosed from 2015 to 2021, the 5-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined reached 70% for the first time. The National Cancer Institute counts 18.6 million survivors in 2025, a number that should reach 26 million by 2040. Cancer deaths are rising slowly in count because the population is ageing, even as the rate keeps falling.
Heart Disease and Cardiovascular Deaths in the US 2026 | American Heart Association Data
CARDIOVASCULAR DEATHS BY TYPE, 2023 (each █ = 25,000)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
All cardiovascular disease ████████████████████████████████████▌ 915,973
Coronary heart disease ██████████████ 349,470
Stroke ██████▌ 162,639
Myocardial infarction ███▌ 93,345
Heart failure ███▌ 89,795
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Cardiovascular Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| Cardiovascular disease deaths, 2023 | 915,973, down from 941,652 in 2022 |
| Age-adjusted CVD death rate, 2023 | 218.3 per 100,000, down from 224.3 |
| Coronary heart disease deaths, 2023 | 349,470 |
| Heart attack deaths, 2023 | 93,345 |
| Heart failure deaths, 2023 | 89,795 |
| Stroke deaths, 2023 | 162,639 |
| Frequency of cardiovascular death | One every 34 seconds |
| Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests treated by EMS, 2024 | 263,711; 10.5% survived to discharge |
Source: American Heart Association, 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update, January 2026; Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), 2024 Annual Report.
The American Heart Association counts a wider group than the CDC’s heart disease line. All cardiovascular disease, including stroke, hypertension and heart failure, caused 915,973 deaths in 2023, down from 941,652 in 2022, and the age-adjusted rate fell to 218.3 from 224.3. The AHA says cardiovascular disease kills more Americans each year than all forms of cancer and accidents combined, which is one death every 34 seconds. Coronary heart disease alone caused 349,470 deaths.
Sudden cardiac arrest is the sharpest end of the problem. CARES counted 263,711 EMS-treated out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in 2024, and only 10.5% of patients survived to hospital discharge, a figure that has barely moved in decades.
Cancer vs Heart Disease: Which Is Deadlier? 2026 | Comparing the Measures
HEART DISEASE VS CANCER ON EACH MEASURE (heart disease = H, cancer = C)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Deaths 2024 H ██████████████████████ 683,491 C ████████████████████ 619,876
Share of all deaths H ██████████████████████ 22.2% C ████████████████████ 20.2%
Age-adjusted rate per 100,000 H ████████████████████ 201 C ██████████████████ 182
Fall in death rate since 1999 H ███████████████████████ 23% C ███████ 7%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Measure | Heart Disease | Cancer |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths, 2024 | 683,491 | 619,876 |
| Share of all deaths, 2024 | 22.2% | 20.2% |
| Age-adjusted rate, 2024 | 201 per 100,000 | 182 per 100,000 |
| Rate decline, 1999 to 2024 | 23% | 7% |
| Leading cause, ages 45-64 | Second (20.6%) | First (25.4%) |
| Leading cause, ages 65 and older | First (24.0%) | Second (20.1%) |
| Leading cause for Hispanic Americans | Second | First (19.6%) |
| Ranked among causes since | 1950 | 1950 |
Source: CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 75, No. 7, September 22, 2026; USAFacts analysis of CDC data, 2026.
The measures agree on the winner. Heart disease causes more deaths (683,491 against 619,876), a larger share of all deaths (22.2% against 20.2%) and a higher age-adjusted rate (201 against 182 per 100,000). The same top-two order has held since 1950, according to CDC data. The only places cancer comes first are the 45 to 64 age group and the Hispanic and Asian populations.
Definitions can move the numbers. The CDC’s heart disease line covers diseases of the heart only, while the AHA’s cardiovascular figure of 915,973 adds stroke and other vascular diseases, a number that would exceed cancer by far. Cancer is a collection of more than 100 diseases that NCHS counts together.
Cancer or Heart Disease FAQs 2026
What kills more people in the US, cancer or heart disease?
Heart disease. The CDC counted 683,491 heart disease deaths and 619,876 cancer deaths in 2024.
What is the number one cause of death in the US?
Heart disease, at 22.2% of all deaths in 2024. Cancer ranks second at 20.2%.
How many people die from heart disease each year?
683,491 in 2024, according to final CDC data. The American Heart Association counts 915,973 deaths from all cardiovascular disease in 2023.
How many people die from cancer each year?
619,876 in 2024. The American Cancer Society projects 626,140 cancer deaths in 2026.
Is cancer or heart disease more deadly for women?
Heart disease, but the gap is small. It caused 20.8% of female deaths in 2024 against 20.0% for cancer.
Is cancer or heart disease more deadly for men?
Heart disease, which caused 23.6% of male deaths against 20.4% for cancer.
Which age group is most likely to die of cancer?
Cancer is the leading cause of death for adults ages 45 to 64, accounting for 25.4% of deaths in that group.
Which age group is most likely to die of heart disease?
Adults 65 and older, where heart disease caused 24.0% of deaths, and 27.3% among those 85 and older.
Has cancer overtaken heart disease anywhere?
Among Hispanic Americans in 2024 (19.6% vs 18.3%) and Asian Americans (23.5% vs 20.2%), cancer causes more deaths than heart disease.
Are heart disease and cancer deaths going down?
Death rates are falling: heart disease down 23% and cancer down 7% since 1999. Raw counts rose slightly in 2024 because the population is older.
What is the cancer survival rate in 2026?
The 5-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined reached 70% for people diagnosed from 2015 to 2021.
How many people get cancer each year?
The American Cancer Society projects 2,114,850 new cases in 2026, about 5,800 a day.
How often does someone die of cardiovascular disease?
About every 34 seconds in 2023, according to the American Heart Association.
Where can I find official death statistics?
The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics publishes final leading-cause data, the American Cancer Society publishes cancer projections each January, and the American Heart Association publishes its statistics update.
Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.