Generally, also, more men than women die. But last year was different: Of the dead, 46,600 were women and 43,919 were men.

The most common cause of death was cardiovascular disease, among women aged 15 to 74, the number of deaths in cardiovascular disease has been going down since 1987, though the decrease seemed to have come to a stop last year. For men the most common cause of death was prostate cancer. For women and men the second most common cause of death was tumor-related diseases, and though breast cancer has long been the second most common cause of death for women, last year it was lung cancer.