Leading Causes of Death in America

Heart disease kills more people in the United States than anything else. It killed 683,491 people in 2024, the most recent year of final data from the CDC. Cancer was second, at 619,876. Those two causes together account for more than four in every ten deaths in the country.^[1]

This page answers the questions people actually ask about how Americans die: the single leading cause, the full top ten, the specific ranks, how the answer changes by age, the leading cause worldwide, and which causes are preventable. Every figure carries its year and links to the government source it came from. Where 2024 final data exists, we use it. Where the most recent official breakdown is older, we say so.

Heart disease. It has been the leading cause of death in the United States nearly every year for a century. In 2024, heart disease killed 683,491 people, about 22 percent of all deaths that year, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.^[1]

Cancer is a close second and has held that rank for decades. The gap is smaller than most people think: 683,491 heart disease deaths against 619,876 cancer deaths in 2024. Total deaths in the US that year were 3,072,666, and the ten leading causes accounted for 70.9 percent of them. Life expectancy at birth was 79.0 years, the highest ever recorded, up from 78.4 in 2023.^[1]

Here are the ten leading causes of death in the United States in 2024, ranked by number of deaths, from the CDC's final data:^[1]

1. Heart disease: 683,491
2. Cancer: 619,876
3. Unintentional injuries (accidents): 197,449
4. Stroke: 166,852
5. Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 145,643
6. Alzheimer disease: 116,022
7. Diabetes: 94,445
8. Kidney disease: 55,081
9. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 52,274
10. Suicide: 48,824

Two things changed in 2024. Suicide entered the top ten for the first time in years, at number ten. COVID-19, which was the tenth leading cause in 2023, fell to fifteenth as COVID deaths dropped 37 percent.^[1]

The second leading cause of death in the US is cancer, with 619,876 deaths in 2024. The third is unintentional injuries, also called accidents, with 197,449 deaths. The fourth is stroke, with 166,852 deaths.^[1]

Accidents ranking third, above stroke and every chronic disease below it, surprises people. Three things drive it: drug overdoses, motor vehicle crashes, and falls. Drug overdose deaths alone were 79,384 in 2024, down from 105,007 in 2023, the largest one-year drop the CDC has recorded.^[2] Falls are the part that climbs with age, and they are the leading injury death for adults 65 and older.

The leading cause of death changes sharply with age. For Americans ages 1 to 44, the leading cause is unintentional injuries, not any disease. For ages 45 to 64, it is cancer. For ages 65 and older, it is heart disease.^[3]

This is why heart disease leads overall: most deaths happen in old age, and heart disease is the top cause there. Ask about a specific age and the honest answer is different. A 30-year-old and an 80-year-old are at risk from almost entirely different things.

For young adults, the leading cause of death is unintentional injuries, and the second is suicide. Among Americans ages 10 to 24, accidents accounted for 40.4 percent of deaths in 2023, suicide for 17.2 percent, and homicide for 16.3 percent. Among ages 25 to 44, accidents accounted for 38.4 percent and suicide for 9.8 percent.^[3]

Most of those accident deaths are drug overdoses and car crashes, not the freak accidents the word suggests. Heart disease and cancer barely touch people under 45. What kills them is injury, suicide, and homicide. If you are thinking about suicide, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Worldwide, the leading cause of death is ischaemic heart disease, the same coronary artery disease that leads in the US. The World Health Organization counted 9.1 million deaths from it in 2021, about 13 percent of all deaths on earth, which makes it the single biggest killer globally.^[4]

Stroke is the world's second-leading cause in a normal year. In 2021, COVID-19 rose to the second-leading cause worldwide, with 8.8 million deaths, before receding.^[4] The lower-income countries still rank lower respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases high, causes that fell off the US list decades ago. Heart disease leads almost everywhere.

The leading preventable cause of death in the United States is cigarette smoking. Smoking and secondhand smoke cause more than 480,000 deaths a year, close to one in five deaths, according to the CDC.^[5] Those deaths are already counted inside heart disease, cancer, and lung disease above; smoking is what drives a large share of the top of the list.

After tobacco, the largest modifiable causes are poor diet and inactivity, excessive alcohol use, and drug overdose. Excessive drinking killed about 178,000 people a year in 2020 and 2021, up nearly 30 percent from four years earlier.^[6] Drug overdose killed 79,384 in 2024.^[2] These are the numbers that individual choices and public policy actually move, which is why public health tracks them apart from the disease categories they feed.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States, and cancer is second for both. The order is the same across sexes; the sizes differ. Men die younger and at higher rates from heart disease, unintentional injuries, and suicide. Women live longer on average, which is part of why Alzheimer disease, concentrated in advanced age, weighs more heavily in women's totals.^[1]

The idea that heart disease is a man's disease is wrong, and it costs lives. It is the number-one killer of American women too.

These rankings come from death certificates. For each death, a doctor or medical examiner records one underlying cause, and the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics tallies them using standard international coding rules. Leading cause means the condition that started the chain of events, not the final one. A death that ends in pneumonia after a stroke is counted as a stroke death. It is also why smoking, which causes many heart and cancer deaths, does not appear as its own line.

The most recent final US data is for 2024, released by the CDC in 2026.^[1] Worldwide figures come from the WHO's Global Health Estimates, whose most recent year is 2021.^[4] Final national data runs about a year behind, so the leading causes for the current year are not confirmed until the following one.

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This page is death education, not medical advice. Figures are the most recent final data from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics and the World Health Organization; see our Sources and Methodology. If you are worried about your own risk, the causes near the top of this list are also the most preventable, and your doctor is the place to start.