A new report breaks down the alarming rise in cancer among working-age women

Hilary Brueck
Updated ·3 min read

  • The American Cancer Society reported that women under 65 are getting cancer at higher rates.

  • Breast cancer cases are the most common, but female lung cancer diagnoses are also soaring.

  • Racial disparities are a factor, too: More Black women are dying of breast cancer.

Working-age women in the US are now more likely to get cancer than men of the same age.

A new report out Thursday from the American Cancer Society showed that the number of women under 65 diagnosed with cancer has been steadily increasing.

The report, which tracked cancer incidence nationwide from 1991 to 2022, found that cancer rates in women under 50 are now 82% higher than for men the same age, signaling a dramatic, steady climb over the past two decades.

The biggest cancer risk for working-age women is still breast cancer, but researchers were alarmed to see female lung cancer cases are also ticking up and have crossed a threshold.

"For the first time, if you're a woman under the age of 65, you have a greater chance of developing lung cancer than a man," Dr. William Dahut, the American Cancer Society's chief scientific officer, said in a briefing with reporters.

"This is, I think, really a transformational change," he said.

US actor Olivia Munn attends the Vanity Fair Oscars Party at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, on March 10, 2024.
The actor Olivia Munn, 44, said she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023.MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images

The trend, building for years, reached a tipping point in 2021.

Dahut said that could be due in part to uneven smoking patterns between men and women in the 1960s. Women smoked "heavily later on, more likely in the mid- to late-'60s, while men peaked earlier," he said.

Still, around 20% of lung cancer diagnoses in women are not linked to smoking and are more likely due to environmental factors like radon and asbestos exposure, air pollution, or heavy drinking.

Racial gap

The report emphasized that while there was major progress in cancer treatment over the 30-year study period, with roughly 4.5 million cancer deaths avoided nationwide from 1991 to 2022, there are still striking racial disparities in cancer detection, treatment, and survivability.

Though white women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, Black women are more likely to die from it, suggesting that both cancer screening and cancer treatment for people of color are subpar.

Native Americans have disproportionately high rates of kidney, liver, stomach, and cervical cancers. Death rates for Black people with prostate, stomach, and uterine cancer are twice as high as for white Americans.

Cancer cases rising in young people

The report does contain some good news: Overall cancer deaths across the US tumbled 34% in the 30-year period from 1991 to 2022.

Increasingly, though, young adults are now facing a higher risk of cancer. Colorectal cancer rates are up for people under 65; cervical cancer is on the rise in women between 30 and 44 years old; and teens between 15 and 19 are more likely to develop adolescent cancers.

"Continued reductions in cancer mortality because of drops in smoking, better treatment, and earlier detection is certainly great news," Rebecca Siegel, an ACS epidemiologist and the lead author of the new report, said in a release.

"However, this progress is tempered by rising incidence in young and middle-aged women, who are often the family caregivers, and a shifting cancer burden from men to women, harkening back to the early 1900s when cancer was more common in women," she said.

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