Aside from skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the U.S., making up about 30% of all new diagnoses. Each year, nearly 60,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ and there are more than 300,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer. Men are also affected by breast cancer, with nearly 3,000 men in the U.S. being diagnosed with invasive breast cancer each year. To understand whether breast cancer rates are changing over time, it’s important to compare incidence rates, and not just the number of new cases. An incidence rate tells us how many people in a set population will be diagnosed with breast cancer over a period of time. It’s usually written as the number of cases in a population of 100,000 people per year. Even if the number of new cases increases, it doesn’t always mean the incidence rates will. As the U.S. population grows, we also expect the number of new cases to increase over time, simply because there are more people.

People in the U.S. are also living longer. Since older age is linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, having more older adults means we can expect to see more breast cancers over time. To better understand today’s breast cancer rates, it helps to look back at the 1980s and 90s. During that time, breast cancer incidence rates increased, mainly because more people were getting screening mammograms. Between 1999 and 2004, these rates decreased, most likely due to fewer women using menopausal hormone therapy after it was linked to a higher risk of breast cancer. Since the mid-2000s, overall incidence rates have increased by about 1% per year but they’re not exactly the same across all age groups. For example, in women 50 and older, rates of invasive breast cancer increased by less than 1% per year. In women under 50, the increase was slightly higher, at just over 1% per year. Breast cancer rates in the U.S. also vary by race and ethnicity. White women and Black women tend to have the highest overall incidence, followed by American Indian and Alaska Native women, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women, and Hispanic and Latina women. While incidence rates are higher for white women in most age groups, Black women are more likely to be diagnosed before the age of 40. Susan G. Komen® has statistics and information about specific populations on our website. To learn more, you can visit the Breast Cancer Statistics page on komen.org. There you’ll find the most up to date information about breast cancer incidence in different groups.