Leading Causes of Death by Age

The leading cause of death depends almost entirely on how old you are. For a newborn it is birth defects. For a child, a teenager, or any adult under 45, it is accidents. For someone in their late 40s, 50s, or early 60s, it is cancer. For someone 65 or older, it is heart disease. One country, one year, five different answers.^[1]

The numbers below are the CDC's counts for 2023, the most recent full breakdown by age group, tallied by the National Center for Health Statistics through its WISQARS system. Every figure is a real number of deaths, not a rate or an estimate, and each one links to the government source it came from.

Here is the single leading cause of death for each age group in the United States in 2023, with the number of deaths, from the CDC's WISQARS data:^[1]

1. Under 1 year: congenital anomalies (birth defects), 4,005
2. Ages 1 to 4: unintentional injury (accidents), 1,275
3. Ages 5 to 9: unintentional injury, 684
4. Ages 10 to 14: unintentional injury, 914
5. Ages 15 to 24: unintentional injury, 14,126
6. Ages 25 to 34: unintentional injury, 30,163
7. Ages 35 to 44: unintentional injury, 36,159
8. Ages 45 to 54: cancer, 32,867
9. Ages 55 to 64: cancer, 101,714
10. Ages 65 and older: heart disease, 554,413

Accidents lead for every age from 1 through 44, a span of more than four decades. Cancer takes over at 45. Heart disease takes over at 65 and never lets go, which is why it leads the country overall: most deaths happen in old age, and heart disease is the top cause there.

For babies under 1 year old, the leading cause of death is congenital anomalies, meaning birth defects. These killed 4,005 infants in 2023. The second cause is problems related to short gestation and low birth weight, the effects of being born too early, at 2,922 deaths. The third is sudden infant death syndrome, SIDS, at 1,445.^[1]

Unintentional injury is the fourth leading cause for infants, at 1,291 deaths. A large share of those are accidental suffocation, which is why the safe-sleep advice about a bare crib, a firm mattress, and no pillows or soft bedding is not fussiness. It is aimed at the fourth leading killer of children under 1.

Once a child passes their first birthday, accidents become the leading cause of death and stay that way through childhood. Unintentional injury led every child age band in 2023: 1,275 deaths at ages 1 to 4, 684 at ages 5 to 9, and 914 at ages 10 to 14.^[1]

The other top causes shift as children get older. For ages 1 to 4, the next causes are congenital anomalies (426) and homicide (275). For ages 5 to 9, cancer is second (387). For ages 10 to 14, suicide becomes the second leading cause of death (481), ahead of cancer (463) and homicide (338). Suicide enters the picture earlier than most people expect, before age 15.

For teenagers and people in their early 20s, grouped by the CDC as ages 15 to 24, the leading cause of death is unintentional injury, which killed 14,126 people in that age band in 2023. The second is suicide, at 5,936 deaths. The third is homicide, at 5,745.^[1]

Those top three causes are all violent or sudden, and together they account for the large majority of deaths at this age. Most of the accident deaths are motor vehicle crashes and drug overdoses, not the rare freak accidents the word suggests. Disease barely registers here. Cancer, the fourth cause, killed 1,463 people aged 15 to 24, about a tenth as many as accidents did.

Through your 20s and 30s, accidents stay the leading cause of death. For ages 25 to 34, unintentional injury killed 30,163 people in 2023, followed by suicide (8,453) and homicide (5,828). For ages 35 to 44, unintentional injury killed 36,159, the highest count for any single cause in any age band under 45.^[1]

The 35 to 44 band is where chronic disease first climbs near the top. Heart disease becomes the second leading cause at that age (11,528 deaths), cancer the third (11,291), and suicide the fourth (8,533). This is the decade when the causes that will eventually lead the country start to appear, while accidents still outrank all of them.

In middle age, from 45 to 64, the leading cause of death is cancer. It killed 32,867 people aged 45 to 54 in 2023 and 101,714 people aged 55 to 64. This is the only stretch of life where cancer, not heart disease, sits at the top.^[1]

The gap is narrow in the younger half. For ages 45 to 54, cancer (32,867) barely leads unintentional injury (30,559) and heart disease (30,430); the top three causes are almost tied. By ages 55 to 64, cancer pulls clearly ahead, with heart disease second (79,726) and accidents third (33,710). Middle age is the handoff, where injury stops leading and the diseases of aging take over.

For people 65 and older, the leading cause of death is heart disease, which killed 554,413 people in that age group in 2023. Cancer is second, at 461,345. Stroke is third (140,813), and chronic lower respiratory disease is fourth (125,603).^[1]

This age group drives the national totals. Most deaths in the United States happen after 65, so the leading causes for older adults are close to the leading causes for the whole country. In 2024, the most recent year of final national data, heart disease killed 683,491 Americans across all ages, the country's number one cause of death for nearly a century.^[3]

For young people, the leading cause of death is unintentional injury, 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. Three causes, all of them sudden, account for roughly three out of four deaths at that age.^[2]

What kills young people is injury, suicide, and homicide, not disease. Heart disease and cancer, the causes that lead the country, barely touch anyone under 45. If you are thinking about suicide, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The leading cause changes because chronic disease takes decades to kill and injury does not. A young body rarely fails on its own, so what ends a young life is almost always something external: a crash, an overdose, a suicide, a homicide. Heart disease and cancer need years of accumulated damage before they become fatal, which is why they wait until middle age and later to reach the top.

This is also why the overall national ranking can mislead. Heart disease leads the United States because most people die old, and heart disease is the top cause in old age. Ask about a specific age and the honest answer is different. A 25-year-old and an 80-year-old are at risk from almost entirely different things, and a single national list hides that.

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 sorts them by age group using standard international coding rules. The tool that produces the age-group chart is called WISQARS, the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System.^[1]

The most recent full breakdown by age is for 2023. Final national totals for all ages combined run about a year ahead of it, and the 2024 all-ages figures are covered in our companion piece, Leading Causes of Death in America.^[3] Age-group data lags because it takes time to code and check every death certificate in the country.

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This page is death education, not medical advice. Figures are the CDC's 2023 age-group counts from WISQARS and its 2024 final mortality data; see our Sources and Methodology. The causes at the top of the young-adult list, injury and suicide, are also among the most preventable, and 988 reaches the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline any time.