Dive Brief:
- More Americans die from heart disease than from any other cause, according to new 2014 mortality data released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Seventy-four percent of deaths in the U.S. were due to 10 common causes. Cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, accidents and stroke rounded out the top five.
- Among infants, the top five killers were congenital malformations, complications of prematurity, maternal complications during pregnancy, sudden infant death syndrome and accidents.
Dive Insight:
The report breaks out data on leading causes of death by age, sex, race and other factors. Among its other findings:
- Deaths from Alzheimer’s disease climbed from 3.3% of total deaths in 2013 to 3.6% in 2014, making it the sixth most common cause of death in the U.S.
- Suicides, up 3.2% in 2014, was the second leading cause of death for people age 10-24 (17.4%) and the fourth leading cause in the 15-44 age group. They were also twice as frequent in whites as in blacks.
- Drug-related deaths climbed 6.2% to 49,714.
In terms of race, at least one of the 10 leading causes was unique to a single population. For American Indian and Alaska natives, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis was fourth, but wasn’t in the top 10 for whites, blacks or Asian/Pacific Islanders. And homicide and septicemia ranked eighth and tenth, respectively, in blacks, but were not in the top 10 for the other three groups.
Overall, there were 724.6 deaths per 100,000 population. Life expectancy was 78.8 years, the same as in 2013.