2024 U.S. Top Causes of Death by Sex and Age Group, Finalized Data
In looking at sex differences in mortality patterns, we see some good news
In the last mortality post, we saw the overall 2024 ranking for causes of death, also split by age groups:
However, one of the biggest differences in mortality patterns (ignoring age) comes from differences by sex, more than geography or race/ethnicity.
Let’s start at the highest level, with the overall top causes of death by count, not distinguishing by age.
Ranking Causes of Death 2018-2024, Count
Top causes of death for females in the U.S.
Top causes of death for males in the U.S.
Some quick observations:
Heart disease and cancer are #1 and #2 causes of death for both males and females each year. After that, the patterns differ quite a bit.
COVID has fallen off the top 10 for both sexes in 2024. It fell off for males in 2023 (it was #11 that year), and was #15 for both males and females in 2024.
Stroke is an important cause of death for both males and females, but has a much higher count for females than males. When we look at rates and age split-outs below, we’ll see what’s going on there.
A very large difference between the two sexes in the cause of death is “Accidents” as a category. Accidental causes of death are all combined for ranking by the CDC (which I’ve often complained about) — this includes drug overdoses, motor vehicle accident deaths, falls, drowning, and many other causes. Males are far more likely to die in this category. Again, when you look at the age breakout, you will understand better.
Certain causes always show up in the male top 10 (suicide and liver disease). but not female. There’s not exactly the equivalent on the other side, and this relates to the ages at which people are dying of these causes that are making the top causes. For females, it’s almost all old women. For males, many of these categories have many younger men showing up. We’ll see this in the age breakouts.
Ranking Causes of Death 2018-2024, Age-Adjusted Rate
We’re going to look at these same ranking tables — same ordering for each — but with different numbers for the entries. This is so we can look at the year-over-year changes as well as more direct comparison between the sexes.
Age-adjusted rates are quoted per 100,000 people per year.
More on age-adjusted rates here:
Top causes of death for females in the U.S.
Top causes of death for males in the U.S.
Again, a few observations:
For every cause of death that appears on both ranking tables for 2023 and 2024, the age-adjusted death rate decreased between the two years.
For each cause of death that appears for both sexes in 2024, the rate is lower for females, EXCEPT for Alzheimer’s disease.
There often isn’t much of a difference in death rate between males and females, except for Accidents, which have a huge difference. We could probably tell that just from the count tables anyway.
There are some major differences in the rates for natural causes of death, but I’m not going to write about them in this post. Below, I will be looking at ratios between the sexes for specific age groups, and we’ll see that external causes of death (accidents, suicide, homicide) drive the largest gaps in mortality between the sexes.
Ranking Tables for 2024 Causes of Death by Age, U.S., Count
Females
Males
In general, I don’t look at absolute number of deaths for analysis, but I think most people have an easier time thinking about death patterns in this way.
If you look at the top row, which gives the total deaths for each age group (not just from the top ten causes), you will see far more women die at ages 85+ than do men, but it’s not because old women have higher mortality rates (as we’ll soon see). It’s just that women tend to live longer, dying at older ages.
If you look at the causes of death at younger ages (and the numbers), you can see why (and how) the men are dying at younger ages: you see much higher numbers dying of the “nasties” of external causes of death (homicide, suicide, accidents) in young adulthood.
Also, heart disease kills men at much younger ages than women. The cancer numbers aren’t as disparate. You can see heart disease and cancer switching places for males multiple times in middle age into older age for males, while the switchover doesn’t occur for females until the oldest ages.
Ranking Tables for 2024 Causes of Death by Age, U.S., Rate
This time, I’m showing death rates by percentages, as I think most people aren’t used to thinking in rates per 100,000 per year. In addition, I want people to see just how low the rates are for some of these deaths….and just how high some are.
At the top of each table is also a male-to-female ratio for each entire age group’s death rate. Alas, a lot of it is a “fatal stupidity ratio” — to the extent it is reflecting differences stemming from external causes of death.
Females
Males
The main point I want to make here involves some of the changes against 2023:
And one of the great things has been the decrease in external causes of death, primarily for young men.
There was a decrease in 2024 in both homicides and drug overdoses, and the fabulous news is that there was a much larger decrease in 2025 in those causes of death. Both of these had spiked in 2020 and 2021, and it looks like homicide will have dropped to well below pandemic levels, though drug overdose death levels are still a problem.
For other causes of death, such as cancer and heart disease, it seems that pandemic-related increases and/or disruptions may be over … at least at a high level. There may be more detailed issues (such as specific cancer types or at younger ages). We shall see.
I’ll take the good news where I can.
This data is valuable!
Thanks for the age related break outs, that's really informative.