Lieve Van den Block

Cancer has replaced cardiovascular diseases as the leading cause of death in several wealthy countries. This chart shows the share of reported deaths caused by cardiovascular diseases and cancer since 1950 in Denmark, Australia, the UK, and Canada. This is based on the underlying cause listed on death certificates and comes from the WHO Mortality Database (2024); we recently updated our charts with the latest release. Fifty years ago, around half of all deaths in these countries were due to cardiovascular diseases. Today, this proportion has dropped to between 20% and 25%. Cancer has become the most common cause of death in many of these countries, even though overall cancer mortality rates have also been declining. Many factors contribute to these trends, such as declines in smoking and improvements in screening, diagnosis, and monitoring. These countries are also leading the use of statins, medicines that lower cholesterol, which likely have had a significant effect on reducing heart-related deaths. Even though fewer people are dying from cardiovascular diseases in some of these wealthy countries, heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. (This Daily Data Insight was written by Fiona Spooner and Veronika Samborska.)