Cancer Risk by Age: What Happens to 10,000 Men at 50, 60, 70 and 80

Cancer risk by age, for men, with smoking, weight and alcohol toggles: out of 10,000 U.S. men aged 50, about 145 die of cancer within ten years. Prostate tops the list of cancers men get at 50, 60, 70 and 80, and reaches the top two of the list that kills only at 70 and 80.

• Out of 10,000 men aged 50, about 145 die of cancer within ten years and about 597 are diagnosed with one. At 70 those figures are 744 and 2,013.
• Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer of men at all four ages shown. Prostate is the most diagnosed cancer at all four and, among the cancers listed, fifth for deaths at 60 and second at 70 and 80.
• The death figures by smoking status are NCI’s own (their any-cancer total adds a small SEER remainder). The diagnosis figures by smoking, weight and alcohol are a DSD estimate, unvalidated, built from NCI baselines and published relative risks.

I am 53, and every time a friend my age gets a diagnosis I wonder how likely that is for me. So I looked up both lists: which cancers men my age get, and which ones they die from. Prostate leads the first at all four ages SEER offers from 50. Lung leads the second.

The figures come from the National Cancer Institute’s SEER*Explorer, pulled September 15, 2026, shown per 10,000 men because at 50 most cancers kill fewer than one man in a thousand. The tables cover men only; SEER publishes the same figures for women, and the query at the bottom gets you there.

Cancer risk by age chart: men at 50, 60, 70 and 80

At 50, lung cancer kills 28 men per 10,000 within ten years, colon and rectum 21, pancreas 14, liver and bile duct 10. Prostate kills 5, the same as kidney after rounding. By 70 the total has grown from 145 to 744, lung is 175 and prostate is second at 80.

Diagnoses run in a different order. Prostate is first at each age: 181 per 10,000 at 50, 545 at 60, 704 at 70. Bladder climbs from eighth at 50 to third at 70. Kidney and melanoma are in the top seven at 50 and, of the cancers listed, eighth and thirteenth for deaths.

Now flip the smoking toggle. For a man of 60 who never smoked, NCI’s Know Your Chances puts lung at 28 deaths per 10,000 rather than 96, and colon and rectum (35) and pancreas (33) move ahead of it. For a current smoker at 60, lung is 314, more than six times the next cancer.

Why the diagnosis list and the death list rank differently

Prostate cancer is found by PSA testing, and the American Cancer Society’s statistics report (Siegel et al., CA, 2026) attributes the early-1990s spike in male cancer incidence to the spread of that test, so the prostate diagnosis figure moves with how many men get tested. Bladder’s row is high partly by definition: SEER counts in-situ tumors there and nowhere else on this page. Pancreatic cancer is the opposite case; SEER puts 51 percent of cases at a distant stage when found, so its two figures sit close together, 19 and 14 at 50.

The 5 prostate deaths at 50 are not 5 of the 181. The diagnosis figure counts men free of that cancer at the start, and a man can be diagnosed with two cancers, so those rows do not add up to the all-cancers total; the death rows do. Dividing one list by the other gives nothing. Prostate diagnoses peak in the decade after 70 (704) while prostate deaths keep climbing into the decade after 80 (187), so during the ten years after 50 prostate diagnoses are common and prostate deaths are rare. The decade with the most diagnoses of any cancer is the one after 70, at 2,013 per 10,000. And the chance of a cancer diagnosis at some point after 50 is 40.9 percent, roughly two men in five; that is a lifetime figure, and it is the one most men have heard.

What these numbers assume

DevCan, the NCI program behind the tool, takes recent diagnosis and death rates and asks what happens to 10,000 men if those rates hold for ten years, allowing for the men who die of something else first. Lung cancer death rates have been falling for years; if that continues, that row runs high. The diagnosis figures come from 21 registries, cases diagnosed 2021 to 2023; the death figures from national death records, 2022 to 2024. Each table carries its own source line, and the full table with confidence intervals is at the bottom.

Cancer risk if you never smoked, and what this page still does not know

How common is lung cancer in non-smokers? For a man who never smoked, NCI’s figures put the ten-year chance of dying from it at 9 per 10,000 at 50, 28 at 60 and 52 at 70, against 28, 96 and 175 for men as a whole. Those come from Know Your Chances, which splits the ten-year chance of dying from each cancer by smoking status using national smoking prevalence and cohort relative risks (Woloshin et al., JAMA Network Open, 2023), on 2020 to 2022 deaths. It is a different dataset from the all-men tables and covers deaths only, and the smoking split shown here runs to 70, so compare rankings across the two, not single cells.

Weight and alcohol are handled by my own estimate on the diagnosis view, described next. Family history, colonoscopy history and any previous cancer are still missing; I have not found a model suitable for a general U.S. audience that turns those into a defensible number across cancers. For screening decisions the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations are the reference; my reading of the colorectal one is in the colon cancer screening post. The tables stop at 80 because that is the last starting age SEER offers. None of this is medical advice, and a population table is no reason to skip a screening test.

How the personalized estimate is calculated

When you set smoking, weight or alcohol on the diagnosis view, the page computes an estimate, because no agency publishes diagnosis figures split that way. It starts from NCI’s ten-year probability of diagnosis for all men at your exact age. It splits that across 36 combinations: smoking (never, former, current), weight (BMI under 25, 25 to 29.9, 30 and over) and alcohol (none, under 12.5 grams a day, 12.5 to 50, over 50; one U.S. drink is 14 grams). The split uses the relative risks Islami et al., CA, 2024 tabulated for the associations IARC classifies as established, with alcohol dose-response from Bagnardi et al., 2015. It is then calibrated so that, averaged over the mix of those factors among U.S. men in your ten-year age band in the 2022 National Health Interview Survey, it reproduces NCI’s all-men figure exactly. A factor left at “all” takes its mix within the group you did choose. The any-cancer total combines the 15 listed cancers and the cancers not listed as competing risks, calibrated the same way to NCI’s all-sites figure. As in NCI’s own diagnosis table, the rows do not add up to it.

The shortcuts, listed rather than hidden: The smoking relative risks, and myeloma’s weight relative risk, were measured on deaths, and I apply them to diagnoses the way Islami et al. did. Some relative risks pool men and women. The weight effect is a per-five-BMI-unit figure applied at 27.5 and 32.5 against 22.5; using 30 for the obese band instead lowers the kidney estimate at 60, for an obese man who never smoked and does not drink, from 71 to 66 per 10,000, the largest such shift. The factors are assumed to multiply, your habits are assumed to hold for the decade, and a relative risk is treated as the same at 50 and at 80. And the model ignores that a heavy smoker is more likely to die of something else before a cancer is found, which would trim his figures a little. Where IARC has not established a link for the whole site, that factor leaves the row unchanged; the table below lists every pair. One check on how rough this is: NCI’s own smoking split for deaths puts a never-smoker’s lung figure at about 30 percent of the all-men figure; this estimate puts it at 16 to 18 percent for diagnoses at 50 to 70, and 22 percent at 80. Nobody has validated it against outcomes, which is why every table it produces says so, and why a change in the controls describes a different group of men rather than what changing a habit would do for you. The relative risks used are listed with the full data table below.

Full data table with confidence intervals, the relative risks, and the exact query

Deaths per 10,000 U.S. men in the next 10 years, with 95% confidence intervals, every SEER site

	Age 50	Age 60	Age 70	Age 80
All Cancer Sites Combined	145.0 (144.2 to 145.8)	393.5 (392.2 to 394.9)	744.3 (742.0 to 746.5)	1136.3 (1132.3 to 1140.4)
Anus, Anal Canal & Anorectum	0.5 (0.5 to 0.6)	0.9 (0.8 to 0.9)	1.1 (1.0 to 1.2)	1.2 (1.0 to 1.3)
Bones and Joints	0.5 (0.4 to 0.5)	1.0 (0.9 to 1.1)	1.7 (1.6 to 1.8)	2.7 (2.5 to 3.0)
Brain and Other Nervous System	7.4 (7.3 to 7.6)	13.5 (13.2 to 13.7)	19.6 (19.3 to 20.0)	19.3 (18.7 to 19.8)
Colon and Rectum (including Appendix)	20.9 (20.6 to 21.2)	36.9 (36.4 to 37.3)	54.5 (53.9 to 55.1)	84.6 (83.5 to 85.8)
Esophagus	7.6 (7.4 to 7.8)	18.9 (18.6 to 19.2)	30.0 (29.5 to 30.5)	32.5 (31.8 to 33.3)
Gallbladder	0.3 (0.3 to 0.4)	0.8 (0.8 to 0.9)	1.8 (1.7 to 1.9)	2.3 (2.1 to 2.5)
Hodgkin Lymphoma	0.3 (0.3 to 0.3)	0.6 (0.5 to 0.7)	1.2 (1.1 to 1.3)	1.9 (1.7 to 2.1)
Kidney and Renal Pelvis	5.5 (5.3 to 5.6)	12.6 (12.3 to 12.8)	21.9 (21.6 to 22.4)	31.5 (30.8 to 32.2)
Larynx	1.8 (1.7 to 1.9)	5.2 (5.0 to 5.3)	7.1 (6.9 to 7.3)	8.0 (7.6 to 8.4)
Leukemia	4.0 (3.9 to 4.2)	12.0 (11.7 to 12.2)	32.7 (32.2 to 33.1)	61.3 (60.3 to 62.3)
Liver and Intrahepatic Bile Duct	9.8 (9.6 to 10.1)	31.7 (31.4 to 32.1)	46.1 (45.6 to 46.7)	45.4 (44.5 to 46.2)
Lung and Bronchus	27.7 (27.3 to 28.0)	95.6 (95.0 to 96.3)	175.3 (174.2 to 176.4)	218.1 (216.3 to 220.0)
Melanoma of the Skin	2.6 (2.5 to 2.7)	5.9 (5.7 to 6.0)	11.9 (11.6 to 12.2)	20.1 (19.6 to 20.7)
Mesothelioma	0.3 (0.3 to 0.3)	1.1 (1.1 to 1.2)	4.2 (4.0 to 4.4)	9.0 (8.6 to 9.4)
Myeloma	2.2 (2.1 to 2.3)	6.5 (6.3 to 6.7)	16.2 (15.8 to 16.5)	29.4 (28.7 to 30.1)
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma	4.0 (3.9 to 4.2)	10.8 (10.6 to 11.1)	27.0 (26.6 to 27.5)	50.3 (49.4 to 51.2)
Oral Cavity and Pharynx	5.9 (5.7 to 6.0)	13.0 (12.8 to 13.3)	18.2 (17.8 to 18.5)	20.3 (19.7 to 20.8)
Pancreas	13.6 (13.3 to 13.8)	34.8 (34.4 to 35.2)	63.2 (62.5 to 63.9)	77.2 (76.1 to 78.3)
Prostate	5.3 (5.2 to 5.5)	27.3 (26.9 to 27.6)	79.8 (79.0 to 80.5)	186.8 (185.0 to 188.5)
Small Intestine	0.6 (0.5 to 0.6)	1.3 (1.2 to 1.3)	2.5 (2.4 to 2.7)	3.7 (3.4 to 3.9)
Soft Tissue including Heart	1.6 (1.5 to 1.7)	2.9 (2.8 to 3.1)	5.2 (5.0 to 5.3)	7.5 (7.2 to 7.9)
Stomach	4.0 (3.9 to 4.2)	8.3 (8.1 to 8.5)	13.5 (13.2 to 13.9)	19.8 (19.2 to 20.4)
Testis	0.3 (0.2 to 0.3)	0.3 (0.3 to 0.3)	0.3 (0.2 to 0.3)	0.3 (0.2 to 0.3)
Thyroid	0.5 (0.5 to 0.6)	1.2 (1.2 to 1.3)	2.5 (2.3 to 2.6)	3.4 (3.1 to 3.6)
Urinary Bladder (Invasive & In Situ)	2.5 (2.4 to 2.6)	9.8 (9.6 to 10.0)	28.5 (28.0 to 28.9)	68.1 (67.0 to 69.2)

Diagnoses per 10,000 U.S. men in the next 10 years, with 95% confidence intervals, every SEER site

	Age 50	Age 60	Age 70	Age 80
All Cancer Sites Combined	597.0 (594.5 to 599.5)	1380.9 (1376.6 to 1385.1)	2013.4 (2006.4 to 2020.4)	2010.9 (1999.3 to 2022.5)
Anus, Anal Canal & Anorectum	3.0 (2.8 to 3.2)	4.6 (4.4 to 4.9)	4.8 (4.5 to 5.1)	4.7 (4.3 to 5.2)
Bones and Joints	1.1 (1.0 to 1.2)	1.6 (1.5 to 1.8)	2.1 (1.9 to 2.2)	2.4 (2.1 to 2.8)
Brain and Other Nervous System	9.2 (8.9 to 9.5)	14.8 (14.4 to 15.2)	19.5 (18.9 to 20.1)	17.9 (17.1 to 18.8)
Colon and Rectum (including Appendix)	76.5 (75.6 to 77.4)	109.2 (108.1 to 110.3)	140.6 (139.0 to 142.2)	158.1 (155.6 to 160.7)
Esophagus	9.8 (9.4 to 10.1)	22.9 (22.4 to 23.4)	33.3 (32.6 to 34.1)	30.4 (29.3 to 31.5)
Gallbladder	0.9 (0.8 to 0.9)	2.1 (2.0 to 2.3)	4.0 (3.8 to 4.3)	5.0 (4.6 to 5.5)
Hodgkin Lymphoma	2.5 (2.4 to 2.7)	3.2 (3.0 to 3.4)	3.8 (3.6 to 4.1)	3.6 (3.2 to 4.0)
Kidney and Renal Pelvis	41.4 (40.8 to 42.1)	70.2 (69.3 to 71.2)	88.1 (86.8 to 89.4)	72.0 (70.3 to 73.8)
Larynx	6.3 (6.1 to 6.6)	15.0 (14.6 to 15.4)	18.4 (17.8 to 19.0)	15.7 (14.9 to 16.5)
Leukemia	17.9 (17.5 to 18.3)	39.3 (38.6 to 39.9)	71.1 (70.0 to 72.2)	90.0 (88.1 to 91.9)
Liver and Intrahepatic Bile Duct	19.1 (18.7 to 19.6)	52.1 (51.4 to 52.9)	62.2 (61.1 to 63.2)	50.2 (48.8 to 51.7)
Lung and Bronchus	43.3 (42.7 to 44.0)	149.5 (148.2 to 150.8)	265.6 (263.4 to 267.8)	274.4 (271.1 to 277.8)
Melanoma of the Skin	32.2 (31.7 to 32.8)	65.8 (64.9 to 66.6)	109.9 (108.4 to 111.3)	124.7 (122.4 to 127.0)
Mesothelioma	0.6 (0.5 to 0.6)	1.8 (1.6 to 1.9)	5.6 (5.3 to 6.0)	9.8 (9.2 to 10.5)
Myeloma	11.8 (11.5 to 12.2)	25.7 (25.1 to 26.2)	42.3 (41.4 to 43.2)	45.7 (44.4 to 47.1)
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma	26.5 (26.0 to 27.0)	51.8 (51.0 to 52.6)	88.4 (87.1 to 89.6)	103.0 (101.0 to 105.1)
Oral Cavity and Pharynx	32.7 (32.1 to 33.3)	56.0 (55.2 to 56.9)	61.3 (60.2 to 62.3)	48.8 (47.4 to 50.2)
Pancreas	18.6 (18.2 to 19.1)	45.0 (44.3 to 45.7)	76.7 (75.5 to 77.9)	81.8 (80.0 to 83.6)
Prostate	181.2 (179.9 to 182.5)	545.3 (542.8 to 547.8)	703.6 (699.9 to 707.3)	457.0 (452.4 to 461.5)
Small Intestine	4.9 (4.7 to 5.1)	8.8 (8.5 to 9.2)	12.4 (11.9 to 12.9)	12.1 (11.5 to 12.9)
Soft Tissue including Heart	5.0 (4.7 to 5.2)	7.7 (7.4 to 8.0)	12.4 (11.9 to 12.8)	15.7 (14.9 to 16.5)
Stomach	12.9 (12.5 to 13.2)	26.6 (26.0 to 27.1)	40.7 (39.9 to 41.6)	43.7 (42.3 to 45.0)
Testis	3.4 (3.3 to 3.6)	1.8 (1.7 to 2.0)	1.0 (0.9 to 1.2)	0.7 (0.5 to 0.9)
Thyroid	12.9 (12.5 to 13.2)	16.0 (15.6 to 16.4)	16.3 (15.7 to 16.8)	10.0 (9.4 to 10.7)
Urinary Bladder (Invasive & In Situ)	22.6 (22.1 to 23.1)	72.4 (71.5 to 73.3)	154.7 (153.0 to 156.3)	203.9 (201.0 to 206.8)

Relative risks the DSD estimate applies (reference: never smoker, BMI under 25, no alcohol); IARC-established associations only, as tabulated by Islami 2024 (smoking, BMI) and Bagnardi 2015 (alcohol, men)

	Smoking	Weight	Alcohol
Lung and bronchus	current 23.86, former 6.80; Islami et al. 2024	not established	not established
Prostate	not established	not established	not established
Colon and rectum	current 1.51, former 1.20; Islami et al. 2024	overweight 1.04, obese 1.08 (per 5 BMI units, applied at 27.5 and 32.5 vs 22.5); Islami et al. 2024	light 1.05, moderate 1.21, heavy 1.53; Bagnardi et al. 2015
Pancreas	current 1.74, former 1.08; Islami et al. 2024	overweight 1.14, obese 1.30 (per 5 BMI units, applied at 27.5 and 32.5 vs 22.5); Islami et al. 2024	not established
Liver and bile duct	current 2.10, former 1.38; Islami et al. 2024	overweight 1.30, obese 1.69 (per 5 BMI units, applied at 27.5 and 32.5 vs 22.5); Islami et al. 2024	light 1.05, moderate 1.08, heavy 1.59; Bagnardi et al. 2015
Bladder (invasive and in situ)	current 3.90, former 2.37; Islami et al. 2024	not established	not established
Kidney and renal pelvis	current 1.55, former 1.38; Islami et al. 2024	overweight 1.29, obese 1.66 (per 5 BMI units, applied at 27.5 and 32.5 vs 22.5); Islami et al. 2024	not established
Melanoma of the skin	not established	not established	not established
Esophagus	current 4.25, former 2.49; Islami et al. 2024	established for adenocarcinoma only; not applied to the whole site	established for squamous cell cancer only; not applied to the whole site
Stomach	current 1.81, former 1.30; Islami et al. 2024	established for cardia cancer only; not applied to the whole site	not applied: Islami 2024 excluded it (no significant association in North America and Europe)
Leukemia	not established for leukemia overall (the RR is for acute myeloid leukemia only)	not established	not established
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma	not established	not established	not established
Mouth and throat	current 5.66, former 1.88; Islami et al. 2024	not established	light 1.20, moderate 2.01, heavy 5.33; Bagnardi et al. 2015
Brain and nervous system	not established	not established	not established
Myeloma	not established	overweight 1.09, obese 1.19 (per 5 BMI units, applied at 27.5 and 32.5 vs 22.5); Islami et al. 2024	not established

Pulled 2026-09-15 from SEER*Explorer (updated 2026-06-22), statistic “Risk of Diagnosis/Dying”, graph “Risk Comparisons” by cancer site, male, all races and ethnicities, precision 0.0001, confidence intervals on. A 20-year window from age 80 is not offered. The raw on-screen values and the site codes are kept in the DadStrengthDaily repository file sources/seer-explorer-risk-by-age-2026-09/raw_captures.py. Suggested citation: SEER*Explorer: An interactive website for SEER cancer statistics [Internet]. Surveillance Research Program, National Cancer Institute; 2026 Apr 22. [updated: 2026 Jun 22; cited 2026 Sep 15]. Available from: https://seer.cancer.gov/statistics-network/explorer/.

I never smoked, so the never-smoked view is mine. At 50, the nearest age to me, lung falls to 9 deaths per 10,000 and colon and rectum tops the list at 19, with about 108 deaths from any cancer against 145 for all men; on the diagnosis side the never-smoked, normal-weight, no-alcohol combination comes out at about 481 of any cancer per 10,000 against 597. Colon and rectum is also the highest cancer on that list with a USPSTF grade A screening recommendation for every man from 50 to 75. I have had one colonoscopy already, for an unrelated iron problem, and I intend to have the next one when it is due.