Incidences for many common types of cancer have risen in recent years, with young women experiencing the brunt of the shift.
According to research from the American Cancer Society, the incidence rate of cancer for women under 50 has increased from 51% higher than men in 2002 to 82% higher than men in 2021, the last year this information was recorded.
Using statistics published in “Cancer Statistics, 2025,” the society’s medical journal, the ACS found that “The risk of developing cancer varies markedly by age and by sex.”
“Middle-aged women now have a slightly higher risk of developing cancer than their male counterparts,” the ACS said in a news release on their findings. “Women younger than age 50 are almost twice as likely to develop cancer than young men, a gap which has widened since the early 2000s.”
“We see for the first time, if you’re a woman under the age of 65, you’re now more likely to develop cancer than men in that same age group,” Dr. William Dahut, a chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, told CNN. “Age remains the No. 1 greatest risk factor for cancer overall, and that hasn’t changed. But we’re seeing some shifting.”
“The only age group where we’re seeing actually an increase in cancer risk, in incidence going up, is under the age of 50,” Dahut told CNN.
Widespread screenings for cervical cancer reduced the incidence and death rates of the disease in women, however, this decrease has begun to stabilize. This is due to an increased proportion of a specific strain of cervical cancer, called adenocarcinoma, that modern screenings often overlook.
The only cancer with a lower chance of survival than it had 40 years ago, uterine cancer, develops in tissues of the uterus.
“There have only been modest advances in treatment and there are no recommended screening tests to detect this disease early,” the ACS said. “About 70% of cases are found at an early stage though because a common early symptom is irregular or postmenopausal vaginal bleeding.”
The ACS said the lack of progress on uterine cancer is due in part to underfunding by the National Cancer Institute.
The ACS findings also saw racial disparities in cancer mortality persist, with Black people and American Indian and Alaska Native people being two times more likely to die of cancer than white people.
“You’re more likely to develop breast cancer as a white woman,” Dahut told CNN. “You’re more likely to die of it as a Black woman, particularly when you look at the younger populations.”
Despite this gloomy news, rates of cancer mortality, however, continue to decline. The ACS attributes these wins to smoking cessation, early cancer detection and treatment advances, which have “reduced the cancer mortality rate in the United States by 34% over the last 30 years, sparing about 4.5 million lives.”
This progress follows declines in the four most-common types of cancer — lung, prostate, breast and colorectal.
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