Probability of developing or dying of cancer United States, 1991.

Since the mid-1960s, the proportion of deaths from the leading cause of U.S. mortality, heart disease, has decreased fairly steadily. The proportion of cancer deaths has risen over the same period, however, from 16.3 percent in 1965 to 23.7 in 1991. Public awareness of this increase has resulted in questions being raised about the probability of developing or dying of cancer. Analyses of published data in the 1973-1991 Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute estimated a person's lifetime risk of developing or dying of cancer. The lifetime risk of developing cancer is 44.8 percent for men and 39.3 percent for women. For both sexes, the risk of dying of lung cancer is higher than for any other cancer.