The CDC has released preliminary death records for the United States in 2024. We all got sensitized to the number of and causes for death during the epidemic and we have been interested to see how deaths do or don’t return to pre-epidemic trends. There were about 3,072,000 deaths in the US in 2024, with men dying at a higher proportion than women, as is usually the case. Men tend to be in worse health and to die more from causes like drug overdoses and gunshots. Black Americans had the highest death rate and Asians the lowest. The overall death rate was 722 persons per 100,000 compared to 753 per 100,000 people in 2023, so a slight decline. (CDC Report)
The leading causes of death were heart disease, 683,000 or over a fifth of all deaths, cancer at 620,000, accidents at 196,500, stroke, 167,000, emphysema and related conditions 146,000, Alzheimers and dementia 116,000 and suicide is up there at 49,000, pretty consistent causes with pre-epidemic years. It looks to me as though we are generally returning to the pre-epidemic trends in terms of rates and causes. In 2019 the death rate was around 715 per 100,000 persons.
