Gallup: 1 in 10 American adults report cancer diagnosis in lifetime
The White House is illuminated pink in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and National Mammography Day on October 19, 2023. Nearly 10% of U.S. adults say they been diagnosed with cancer, which is the highest figure since Gallup began tracking the disease over nearly two decades. File Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License Photo
Nearly 10% of U.S. adults say they have been diagnosed with cancer, the highest figure since Gallup began tracking the disease over 17 years.
The percentage reached 9.7% in 2024-25, according to the survey released Monday by Gallup. It was 7% in 2008-009 and hovered just over that from 2010-15. It rose to 8.3% in 2018-19, 8.5% in 2020-21 and 8.9% in 2022-23.
The rates are part of Gallup’s National Health and Well-Being Index in two-year averages.
Those surveyed were asked: “Has a doctor or nurse ever told you that you have cancer?”
In the latest Gallup Panel, 16,949 U.S. residents 18 and older were surveyed online Feb. 18-26, May 27-June 4 and Aug. 26-Sept. 3 and another 23,969 adults quarterly in 2024. Before, no phone interviews were conducted.
The margin of sampling error was about plus or minus 0.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Since 2008, more than 3 million surveys have been conducted.
“Overall, the cancer story in the U.S. is mixed with both good news and bad news,” Gallup’s Dan Withers wrote. “Mortality is falling and people are living longer post-diagnosis, but an aging population and an increasing percentage of those living post-removal or post-remission bring their own challenges to the U.S. healthcare system.”
That’s because they are seeking more treatment.
“The result is that even as millions of Americans are no longer acutely ill, they remain medically engaged, seeing oncologists or other specialists, undergoing scans, managing late effects, and living with ongoing health anxiety,” he said.
This data reflect increased needs for healthcare resources, including from the government. More than a record 24 million are covered through the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, with enhanced subsidies set to end this year. Enrollees have doubled since 2021.
“For leaders, knowledge of these trends is critically important in setting and prioritizing public policy to address them, particularly given an aging population that will be expected to steadily increase new cancer diagnoses in the next decade,” Withers said.
The survey results are contrary to lower cancer rates as reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates decreased by 4% from 460.5 per 100,000 people in 2013 to 442.3 per 100,000 in 2022.
The American Cancer Society found the cancer death rate declined 1.7% each year between 2013 and 2022. This goes along with the five-year relative survival rate, which increased from 63% for people diagnosed in 1995-1997 to 69% in 2014-2020.
Some types of cancer are rising, including breast cancer among women under 50 and younger adults.
National Institutes of Health researchers recently found increases in 14 cancer types among people younger than 50, from 2010 through 2019.
There were decreases among 19 other cancer types.
“Taken together, these results indicate that the slowly rising percentage of Americans who have had a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime is not a result of increasing rates of new cases,” Withers said.
The U.S. population is aging, and by 2034 there will be more adults 65 and older than younger than 18 for the first time, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated.
Cancer diagnoses among older Americans climbed 3.4 percentage points to 21.5% since 2008-09 with those 45 to 64 up 8.9%, a 1.5-point increase.
Essentially unchanged are life cancer prevalence among adults under 45: 1.1% 18-29 and 2.4% for those 30-44 in the latest survey.
The survey also broke down data by race.
White adults continue to be the most likely to be living with a current or prior cancer diagnosis (10.9%). But the 2.7 percentage point increase since 2008-09 is comparable among Black people at 7.8% (+3.6). Hispanic adults are at 5.4% (+2.3) and Asian adultds at 3.2% (+1.4%.
Men with cancer in their lifetime (9.8%) surpassed women (9.6%). Males rose 3.6 percentage points from 2008-09 and women went up.
Men are benefiting from declines in historically deadly cancers, including lung cancer amid steadily dropping smoking rates and for prostate cancer with widespread use of PSA testing, according to the American Cancer Society.
Among women, breast cancer mortality has continued to fall, but at a slower rate than what was found between 1990 and 2010. Women’s lung cancer mortality has eased much more modestly than among men.