Declining lung cancer rates among young men and women in the United States: a cohort analysis.

Although overall age-adjusted rates of mortality from lung cancer in the United States continue to rise, rates at ages below 45 years have begun to decline. In this report we show that the decrease is greatest among white men, with a 29% drop between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, but a decrease also occurred among black men and white and black women. Cohort analyses revealed that the rates of lung cancer peaked among men born around 1925-1930 and among women born around 1935-1940, and have declined thereafter. If these trends continue, overall lung cancer mortality rates will start to decline in the 1990s among men and after the year 2000 among women.