The United States expected more than 2 million new cancer diagnoses in 2024, marking the first time that threshold was ever crossed. Roughly 39.2% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, based on data from the National Cancer Institute. That means about 2 in 5 people will face a cancer diagnosis before they die.
New Cases Each Year
The 2-million-case milestone reflects decades of population growth and an aging population, not necessarily a surge in cancer risk per person. To put that number in perspective, it means roughly 5,500 people receive a new cancer diagnosis every single day in the U.S. The most commonly diagnosed cancers account for a large share of that total. Prostate cancer leads with an estimated 333,830 new cases projected for 2026, followed closely by breast cancer at 324,580. Lung cancer comes in third at about 229,410 cases, then colorectal cancer at 158,850, and melanoma at 112,000. Together, these five cancers make up more than half of all diagnoses.
Pediatric cancers are far less common. An estimated 14,910 children and adolescents ages 0 to 19 were expected to be diagnosed in 2024, representing about 1% of all cancer cases. Of those, roughly 9,620 were children under 15 and 5,290 were teenagers.
Who Gets Cancer and at What Age
Cancer is overwhelmingly a disease of older adults. The median age at diagnosis is 67, meaning half of all cases occur in people younger than that and half in people older. The numbers climb steeply with age: cancer strikes fewer than 26 out of every 100,000 people under age 20, rises to about 350 per 100,000 among those in their late 40s, and exceeds 1,000 per 100,000 for people 60 and older. If you’re under 40, your individual risk in any given year is relatively low. After 60, it increases sharply.
Race and ethnicity also shape cancer outcomes in significant ways. Black Americans have the highest overall cancer death rate of any racial or ethnic group and a lower five-year survival rate than white Americans. Black men are more likely to develop prostate cancer than men of any other group and more than twice as likely to die from it. Black women, while slightly less likely to develop breast cancer than white women overall, are more likely to die from it, partly because it tends to be diagnosed at later stages and in more aggressive forms. Black men also have the highest rates of developing and dying from lung cancer, and Black women face higher cervical cancer death rates than white women.
These disparities reflect a combination of factors: differences in access to screening and early detection, insurance coverage gaps, environmental exposures, and in some cases biological differences in tumor characteristics.
Where You Live Matters
Cancer rates vary meaningfully from state to state. Kentucky has the highest age-adjusted incidence rate in the country at 519 cases per 100,000 people (based on 2018 to 2022 data), while New Mexico has the lowest at about 373 per 100,000. That gap of nearly 150 cases per 100,000 reflects regional differences in smoking rates, obesity prevalence, access to healthcare, and screening habits. States in the Southeast and Appalachia tend to cluster near the top, while parts of the Southwest and West tend to have lower rates.
Survival Rates and Survivorship
A cancer diagnosis is no longer the automatic death sentence it once was. For people diagnosed in 2017 (the most recent year with mature follow-up data), 72.5% survived at least five years. That rate has been trending upward, rising steadily from 2012 through 2021. The improvement is driven by earlier detection, more targeted treatments, and expanded screening programs, though gains have been uneven across cancer types. Some cancers, like localized prostate and breast cancer, have five-year survival rates above 90%. Others, like pancreatic and advanced lung cancer, remain far more lethal.
As of May 2025, an estimated 18.6 million people in the United States are living with a history of cancer. That’s roughly 5.4% of the total population. This number includes people who are actively in treatment, those in remission, and those considered cured. It has grown substantially over the past two decades, both because more people are being diagnosed and because more of them are surviving longer.
Deaths From Cancer
Despite improving survival rates, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease. An estimated 1,590 children and adolescents were expected to die from cancer in 2024 alone. For adults, the toll is far higher. Lung cancer kills more Americans than any other type, followed by colorectal, pancreatic, and breast cancers. The overall cancer death rate has dropped about 33% since its peak in 1991, translating to millions of deaths averted, but the rising total number of new cases means the absolute number of deaths remains substantial.
The gap between incidence (how many people get cancer) and mortality (how many die from it) continues to widen in a positive direction. More people are being diagnosed, but a growing majority are surviving. For the roughly 2 in 5 Americans who will eventually hear the words “you have cancer,” the odds of living years or decades beyond that diagnosis are better than at any point in history.