ANNUAL CANCER INCIDENCE RATES in the U.S. continue to fall in men but are rising among women, according to a study published Jan. 16, 2025, in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Using national data, researchers found that cancer incidence decreased by an average of 0.3% per year in men but increased by 0.4% per year among women between 2012 and 2021.

For decades, men of all ages had a higher risk for cancer than women, but men and women are now diagnosed at similar rates. Today, 39.9% of men will receive an invasive cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, compared with 39% of women. However, women younger than 65 now have a higher cancer risk than men in the same age group. For every 100,000 women ages 50 to 64, roughly 833 will receive a cancer diagnosis each year, compared with 831 men per 100,000. The difference is more pronounced in people younger than 50. In fact, 141 of every 100,000 women younger than 50 will develop cancer annually, compared with 77 in 100,000 men in the same age range.

The study authors noted this shift is due, in part, to rates leveling out after a surge in prostate cancer cases among men in the early 1990s. Widespread use of new prostate‐specific antigen (PSA) testing caught more cases of the disease. However, many of these prostate cancer diagnoses were unlikely to cause death and otherwise would have gone undetected. Updated screening guidelines in 2008 and 2012 recommended limiting PSA testing to men over 50 and younger men at high risk, which caused prostate cancer diagnoses to drop significantly.

Cases of some cancers in women are decreasing at slower rates than in men. For example, over the 10-year timeframe analyzed in the study, lung cancer incidence declined by 1.4% annually among women, compared with 3% annually among men. Women now account for more new lung cancer diagnoses than men. Researchers attribute this in part to women picking up the habit of smoking in the mid-20th century, which was decades later than men did, and quitting later as a result. Also, women often need more time to quit smoking than men do.

Additionally, cases of breast cancer, a disease that primarily affects women, have gone up by about 1% annually since the mid-2000s. Researchers noted some factors that contribute to the increase include rising alcohol use, the increasing prevalence of obesity, and the trend of women having fewer children than they did before 1980.

Source: CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians