More Cancer Diagnoses, Mostly Because We Live Longer: Incidence Trends Explained

More people are diagnosed with cancer every year, and the main reason is that there are more of us and more of us are living into old age. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of new cancer cases worldwide rose by 28%, but the risk of cancer at any given age barely changed: population ageing and growth accounted for the whole rise.^[1] And underneath the overall picture, some cancers are becoming more common while others are falling.

Headlines about "record cancer cases" and "cancer rates rising" often mix two different things. A count tells you how many people need a diagnosis, treatment, a nurse specialist and support this year. A rate tells you how likely a person of a given age is to develop cancer, and whether that risk is changing. Confusing them can lead to unwarranted fear or to complacency. For people living with cancer, their families and the charities beside them, the count is the case for funding services, and the rate is the case for prevention.

Most of the rise in cancer cases comes from more people living longer

Cancer is mostly a disease of later life. In the UK, almost two in five new cancer cases (37%) are diagnosed in people aged 75 and over, and incidence rates are highest in people aged 85 to 89 (data for 2019 and 2021 to 2022).^[3] So when a population grows older, the number of diagnoses climbs even if nobody's risk at a given age has changed. When the population grows in size, the number climbs again.

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) cancer collaboration has split the change in global case numbers into these parts. Between 2006 and 2016, new cancer cases rose by 28%. Population ageing contributed 17 percentage points, population growth 12, and changes in age-specific rates minus 1: in other words, the risk of cancer at each age fell very slightly while the count rose sharply.^[1] The previous decade's analysis showed the same pattern. Between 2005 and 2015, cases rose by 33%, with ageing contributing 16 points, growth 13 and changing rates 4.^[4] In both periods, demographic change accounted for almost all of the rise, and changing risk for very little of it. The two come from successive GBD rounds with revised methods, so they are the same message twice rather than a trend. Later rounds point the same way: GBD 2019 reported that new cases rose by 26.3% between 2010 and 2019 while the global age-standardised incidence rate was essentially unchanged, at -1.1% (uncertainty interval -5.8% to +3.5%).^[5]

This is why statisticians use age-standardised rates. They ask what the rate would be if every population, or the same population in different years, had the same age structure. GLOBOCAN, for example, standardises its rates to the 1966 Segi-Doll world standard population.^[6] A crude count or crude rate shows the size of the need; an age-standardised rate shows whether risk is changing.

Counting cases and measuring risk tell different stories

The UK is a clear worked example: its registries cover the whole population over several decades. A Cancer Research UK-led analysis in the BMJ of adults aged 35 to 69 found that between 1993 and 2018 the number of cancer cases rose by 57% in men and 48% in women. Over the same period, age-standardised incidence rates rose by an average of 0.8% a year in both sexes, and that increase was driven mainly by prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women.^[2] Meanwhile, age-standardised mortality rates for all cancers combined fell by 37% in men and 33% in women.^[2]

Across all ages, Cancer Research UK reports more than 403,000 new cancer cases in the UK every year (2019, 2021 to 2022), and puts the rise in all-cancer incidence rates at around 15% since the early 1990s but only about 2% in the last decade. Its summary page does not say whether those rates are age-standardised, so they are not directly comparable with the figures above.^[3]

The United States shows a different shape. Age-adjusted incidence in men spiked in the early 1990s with the spread of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, then generally fell until 2014 and has stayed at about 500 per 100,000 men through 2022. In women, the rate has risen gradually since 1978, reaching 445 per 100,000 in 2022, so the gap between men and women has narrowed: the male-to-female rate ratio fell from a peak of 1.6 in 1992 to 1.1 in 2022.^[7] Taken across all cancers, the US incidence rate rose by just 0.2% a year from 2012 to 2022.^[7] Even so, the American Cancer Society projects about 2.1 million new cases in 2026, a number pushed up by the size and age of the population.^[7]

The UK and US series use different standard populations and different periods, so their figures should not be set side by side as if they measured the same thing. What they share is the pattern: in both countries the number of diagnoses has grown much faster than the underlying risk.

Some cancers are becoming more common while others are falling

A flat overall rate can hide large movements in individual cancers. The US data, which cover close to the whole population, show this most clearly. Over roughly the decade to 2022, incidence rates fell for lung cancer, bladder cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and rose for several others.^[7]

Source for chart and table: Siegel et al., Cancer statistics, 2026 (rates age-adjusted to the 2000 US standard population and adjusted for reporting delays).^[7]

The falls in lung cancer follow falls in smoking, and men's rates are falling faster than women's because women took up smoking in large numbers later and were slower to quit.^[7] The same lag is visible worldwide: GLOBOCAN reports that in many higher-HDI ("transitioned") countries lung cancer rates in women continue to rise, with stabilisation or declines in only a few, such as the United States and the Netherlands.^[6] The rise in cancers of the tongue, tonsil and oropharynx is linked to human papillomavirus (HPV).^[7]

Between 2008 and 2017, breast cancer incidence rose by 3% to 5% a year in South Korea, Japan, Bahrain, Thailand, China and India, which GLOBOCAN's authors link to fewer and later pregnancies, rising excess body weight, less physical activity and more alcohol, with wider screening playing a part in some higher-income countries.^[6] Cervical cancer shows how trends can split by income. It fell steadily in many high-income countries after cytology screening was introduced, yet it is still rising in many sub-Saharan African registries, fastest in Blantyre, Malawi, at 7.9% a year. Japan and China are among the few other countries where it has increased.^[6] A 2016 projection for the UK placed thyroid, liver, oral and kidney cancers among the fastest accelerating cancers between 2015 and 2035.^[8] The rise of bowel cancer in adults under 50 is covered in our study of early-onset cancer.

Some changes in incidence reflect how cancer is looked for, not only how often it occurs

Incidence counts diagnoses, so anything that changes diagnosis changes incidence. Prostate cancer is the clearest example. US incidence in men surged in the early 1990s because widespread PSA testing detected many cancers that were causing no symptoms. After the US Preventive Services Task Force recommended against PSA screening for men aged 75 and over in 2008 and for all men in 2012, the prostate cancer incidence rate dropped by almost 40% between 2007 and 2014, before rising again by 2.9% a year from 2014 to 2022, with steeper increases in regional-stage (4.6% a year since 2013) and distant-stage (5.6% a year since 2011) disease.^[7] GLOBOCAN describes the same rise-and-fall following PSA testing in other countries, with the later declines reflecting first a depletion of previously undetected cases and then less testing.^[6]

US kidney cancer rates rose for decades largely through incidental detection on scans done for other reasons, and may now have stabilised.^[7] Changes to how tumours are classified can also move the numbers: part of the reported rise in colorectal cancer among young adults is an artefact of a 2013 coding change that made some carcinoid tumours reportable as cancers (in the US, two thirds of appendiceal cancers in people under 50 in 2016 were carcinoid tumours), although studies that exclude these still find a genuine increase.^[6] And disruption can push rates down. In 2020, US incidence rates were 9% to 10% lower than expected because of pandemic disruption to diagnosis, mostly for cancers without symptoms.^[7]

When incidence rises because more early or slow-growing cancers are found, five-year survival can rise while death rates barely move, through lead-time bias and overdiagnosis. Our guide to what survival statistics mean explains this in more detail. The honest reading of any trend is to ask whether death rates and stage at diagnosis are moving in the same direction as incidence.

Projections to 2050 depend on what they assume about risk

Every projection is a set of assumptions turned into a number. GLOBOCAN, the best known, takes UN population projections, assumes that 2024 incidence rates stay constant, and projects about 34.4 million new cancer cases worldwide in 2050, a 67% rise from 20.6 million in 2024. Its authors say plainly that demographic change is the primary driver, with the world's population projected to grow from 8.2 billion to 9.7 billion.^[6] The proportional rise is steepest in the poorest countries, which our study of how many people cancer affects worldwide sets out.

The constant-rate assumption is a deliberate simplification, and the authors list its limits: it does not account for future changes in risk factors, the effect of prevention, or new screening and early detection methods.^[6] They also turn it into a target. To keep the number of new cases in 2050 no higher than in 2024, global incidence rates would need to fall by 2% every year over the coming decades.^[6]

The GBD 2023 study takes a different route. Its forecasting framework models future exposure to risk factors and uses the Socio-demographic Index as a covariate. Its reference forecast, which the authors call the most likely future, is 30.5 million new cases in 2050 (uncertainty interval 22.9 to 38.9 million) and 18.6 million deaths, rises of 61% and 75% from 2024. The authors conclude that most of the increase is likely due to demographic change, because age-standardised death rates are forecast to change by only -5.6% between 2024 and 2050.^[9]

National projections tell the same story. A 2016 UK projection used an age-period-cohort model fitted to 1979 to 2014 data and converted to rates with official population projections. It found incidence rates almost flat, changing by -0.03% a year in men and +0.11% a year in women between 2015 and 2035, yet projected about 514,000 cases in 2035 (243,690 in women and 270,261 in men), and urged planners to allow for the growing and ageing population.^[8] Cancer Research UK's current projection is that UK incidence rates (again, the page does not say whether they are age-standardised) will rise by 2% between 2024 to 2026 and 2038 to 2040, with more than 505,000 new cases a year by 2038 to 2040.^[3] The two use different models and data, so they are not a series, but both show counts rising far more than risk.

What the evidence asks of us

• Plan services for the count, not the rate. Even where risk at each age is flat or falling, the number of people needing diagnosis, treatment and support will keep rising because populations are growing and ageing. The UK projection authors put it directly: the growing number of cases and deaths "as a result of the growing and ageing population should be taken into consideration by healthcare planners".^[8] Workforce, diagnostic capacity and support services, including care designed for older people with cancer, need to be sized for the people who will arrive.
• Treat prevention as the way to bend the curve. Only falling rates can offset demographic growth, and GLOBOCAN's arithmetic shows how large the fall would need to be: 2% a year, globally, for decades.^[6] Its authors call reducing exposure to tobacco, cancer-causing infections, alcohol, excess body weight and physical inactivity the most powerful and sustainable approach to lowering cancer risk.^[6] The falling lung cancer rates in men in the US show that sustained action on a risk factor does move incidence.^[7]
• Watch the cancers that are rising, and ask why. Rising rates of liver, oral and HPV-linked cancers, uterine cancer in many groups, and cervical cancer in parts of sub-Saharan Africa deserve attention in national cancer plans, along with the rise in advanced-stage prostate cancer in the US.^[7][6]
• Report numbers honestly. Publish counts and age-standardised rates together, say which is which, and set incidence alongside stage and mortality so that changes in testing are not mistaken for changes in risk. Keeping population-based registries funded is what makes any of this possible; the GBD 2023 authors note that many countries do not have up-to-date cancer surveillance data.^[9]

Rising numbers are not a sign that efforts against cancer are failing. In the UK and the US, cancer death rates at a given age have been falling for decades.^[2][7] But they are a firm sign that services must grow, and that prevention is the only route to fewer diagnoses rather than just better care for more of them. More on how common cancer is, and what can change it, is gathered in our cancer research library.

Language: this piece says "people with cancer" and "people living with and after cancer", and describes the illness and its treatment plainly, without combat metaphors. Clinical terms such as "stage", "incidence" and "net survival" are used in the sense the cited source defines them.

Why we're publishing this

Charities and support services are often asked to explain headlines about rising cancer, and to make the case for more nurses, more diagnostic capacity and more support. That case is strongest when it is accurate. This study separates what is happening to the number of people diagnosed from what is happening to the risk of cancer, so that organisations working with people affected by cancer can argue for services sized to real need, and for prevention that changes the risk, without overstating either.

How to read this data

Incidence means new diagnoses; it is not prevalence (people living with cancer) or mortality (deaths). Age-standardised rates remove the effect of age structure so that risk can be compared over time or between places; counts and crude rates do not, and the two should never be compared directly. Different sources use different standard populations (the world standard for GLOBOCAN, the 2000 US standard for US figures), so their rates are not interchangeable. The GBD decompositions come from successive model rounds and are estimates with uncertainty. GLOBOCAN's 2050 figure is a demographic projection that holds rates constant; the GBD figure is a model-based forecast; neither is a prediction of what must happen. Much of the trend detail comes from the US and UK, whose registries are long-running and near-complete; trends in countries with less registry coverage are less certain.

Use this data

Free to cite with attribution to Better Health For Everyone. Charities, campaigners and journalists are welcome to reuse these figures and charts. For the underlying figures as a spreadsheet, get in touch.

Important: This article summarises published research for general information. It is not medical advice and cannot be used to diagnose, treat or predict anything about an individual. If you have concerns about your own or someone else's health, please speak to a qualified health professional.

Sources

1. Global Burden of Disease Cancer Collaboration (Fitzmaurice C, et al.). Global, regional, and national cancer incidence, mortality, years of life lost, years lived with disability, and disability-adjusted life-years for 29 cancer groups, 1990 to 2016. JAMA Oncology, 2018. europepmc.org/article/MED/29860482
2. Shelton J, Zotow E, Smith L, Johnson SA, Thomson CS, Ahmad A, Murdock L, Nagarwalla D, Forman D. 25 year trends in cancer incidence and mortality among adults aged 35-69 years in the UK, 1993-2018: retrospective secondary analysis. BMJ, 2024. europepmc.org/article/MED/38479774
3. Cancer Research UK. Cancer incidence for all cancers combined. Cancer Research UK, accessed 2026. cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/incidence/all-cancers-combined
4. Global Burden of Disease Cancer Collaboration (Fitzmaurice C, et al.). Global, regional, and national cancer incidence, mortality, years of life lost, years lived with disability, and disability-adjusted life-years for 32 cancer groups, 1990 to 2015. JAMA Oncology, 2017. europepmc.org/article/MED/27918777
5. Global Burden of Disease 2019 Cancer Collaboration (Kocarnik JM, et al.). Cancer incidence, mortality, years of life lost, years lived with disability, and disability-adjusted life years for 29 cancer groups from 2010 to 2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. JAMA Oncology, 2022. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC8719276
6. Sung H, Filho AM, Laversanne M, Ferlay J, Siegel RL, Soerjomataram I, Jemal A, Bray F. Global cancer statistics 2024: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, 2026. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC13343830
7. Siegel RL, Kratzer TB, Wagle NS, Sung H, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2026. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, 2026. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC12798275
8. Smittenaar CR, Petersen KA, Stewart K, Moitt N. Cancer incidence and mortality projections in the UK until 2035. British Journal of Cancer, 2016. europepmc.org/article/MED/27727232
9. GBD 2023 Cancer Collaborators. The global, regional, and national burden of cancer, 1990-2023, with forecasts to 2050: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. The Lancet, 2025. europepmc.org/article/MED/41015051