Heart disease, cancer remain top causes of death

The final reports on 2014 death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show heart disease and cancer as the top two causes of death for Americans, while life expectancy for white women bucked the long-term trends and declined slightly.

There are few changes in leading causes of death, with the top 10 remaining in the same order as in the 2013 report.

“The big takeaway is that things have not changed a whole lot," Robert Anderson, chief of the CDC’s mortality statistics branch, told the New York Daily News. "That is both good, in that there were no negative surprises, and bad in that there were no substantial drops in anything either."

Combined, heart disease and cancer accounted for more than half of all the 2.6 million deaths registered in the report.

Several conditions did see increases in their death rates. Alzheimer’s deaths went up by 8.1 percent, suicide deaths increased by 3.2 percent, and deaths due to accidents went by 2.8 percent. Deaths due to chronic lower respiratory diseases and influenza and pneumonia declined slightly.

Previously documented differences based on age and race were present again in 2014, with cancer deaths outpacing heart disease among Hispanics, and the most common cause of death for people under the age of 44 remaining unintentional injuries.

The agency’s report on life expectancy also offered few surprises.

While overall life expectancy remained unchanged at 78.8 years, the rate for white females saw an unusual, if small, decline at 0.1 percent. Overall, however, life expectancy remained higher for females than males, with women living an average of 4.8 years longer than men, a number which hasn’t changed since 2010.

The age-adjusted death rate continued its long-term decline, hitting a record low at 724.6 deaths per 100,000 U.S. standard population, a 1 percent decrease from 2013. The infant mortality rate also hit a record low, declining 2.3 percent to 5.82 deaths per 1,000 live births.