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Population aging is pushing up Chile’s crude cancer death rate, even as age-adjusted rates are falling. In Chile, the annual number of cancer deaths as a share of the total population has been rising for decades. From this, it would be easy to assume that cancer is getting worse. But the chances of dying from cancer at most ages are lower than they used to be. The missing piece is that the country’s population is changing quickly, and older people now make up a much larger share. That’s what the chart shows. The crude cancer death rate, in red, counts registered cancer deaths per 100,000 people of all ages. This metric has been going up, reflecting the fact that cancer risks increase steeply with age, and the population has grown much older. The blue line, by contrast, shows the age-adjusted rate. This metric removes the effect of aging by holding the age structure constant. This line has been falling for decades, which means that Chileans at almost every age are now less likely to die from cancer than people of the same age were in the past. The pattern we see in Chile is happening in many other countries, too, and is visible in the global estimates. (written by @EOrtizOspina)