Cancer is primarily a disease of the elderly.
Since 1981, absolute increases in cancer incidence rates have occurred primarily in Canadians aged 50 or over, and this trend has been stronger among men than among women. The gender difference is almost certainly due to the rapid increases observed in prostate cancer. Most encouraging is the fairly steady decline in mortality that has occurred since 1988 among both men and women in all age groups under 70 years. Although incidence rates were somewhat higher among women than men between 20 and 54 years of age, for all other age groups incidence was higher among men. This is due to the higher incidence of cancers of the breast and genital organs in women of reproductive age, and the higher incidence of most types of cancer in older men.