Unintentional falls are becoming a leading cause of death among older adults in the U.S., with a recent federal report noting that the majority of these fatalities occur among white individuals.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2003 and 2023, the death rates from falls increased by more than 70% for adults aged 65 to 74. The rise was over 75% for those aged 75 to 84, and it more than doubled for individuals aged 85 and older.
“Falls continue to be a public health problem worth paying attention to,” stated Geoffrey Hoffman, a researcher from the University of Michigan who was not part of the study. “It’s curious that these rates keep rising.”
The CDC researchers did not try to answer why death rates from falls are increasing. But experts say there may be a few reasons, like gradually improving our understanding of the the role falls play in deaths and more people living longer — to ages when falls are more likely to have deadly consequences.
More than 41,000 retirement-age Americans died of falls in 2023, the most recent year for which final statistics based on death certificates are available. That suggests that falls were blamed in about 1 of every 56 deaths in older Americans that year.
More than half of those 41,000 deaths were people 85 and older, the CDC found, and white people accounted for 87% of deaths in the oldest category.
Falls can cause head injuries or broken bones that can lead to permanent disability and trigger a cascade of other health problems. A number of factors can contribute to falls, including changes in hearing and vision and medications that can cause light-headedness.
Death rates varied widely from state to state. In 2023, Wisconsin had the highest death rates from falls, followed by Minnesota, Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont. Wisconsin’s rate was more than five times higher than the rate of the lowest state, Alabama.
Ice and wintry weather may partly explain why fatal falls were more common in states in the upper Midwest and New England, but experts also pointed to other things at play, like differences in how well falls are reported and to what extent they are labeled a cause of death.
“We’ve yet to unravel why you see such differences in state rates,” said Hoffman, who studies falls among the elderly.
Researchers also can’t yet explain why white seniors die of falls at higher rates than people in other racial and ethnic groups. In the 85-and-up age group, the death rate for white Americans is two or three times higher than any other group, while older Black people had the lowest fall-related death rate.
“Kind of a flip of the traditional disparity lens,” Hoffman said, referring to the fact that for most other rates of illness and injury, people of color are disproportionately affected.
Staying active can help people avoid falls, experts say.
