--- title: Falls Increasingly Fatal for Older Americans, CDC Report Finds description: 55% of unintentional injury deaths come from falling canonical: https://time.com/3851665/fatal-falls-older-americans-cdc-study/ author: Josh Sanburn article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-08T15:10:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T07:03:03.786Z article:section: Health og:title: Why More Older Americans Are Suffering From Fatal Falls og:description: The rate of Americans aged 65 and over who die from a fall has doubled since 2000 og:url: https://time.com/3851665/fatal-falls-older-americans-cdc-study/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why More Older Americans Are Suffering From Fatal Falls twitter:description: The rate of Americans aged 65 and over who die from a fall has doubled since 2000 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Why More Older Americans Are Suffering From Fatal Falls > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=585dc253-0be1-4098-8bfa-2caa43342806&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [Josh Sanburn](https://time.com/author/josh-sanburn/) ## Josh Sanburn May 8, 2015 3:10 PM UTC by [Josh Sanburn](https://time.com/author/josh-sanburn/) ## Josh Sanburn May 8, 2015 3:10 PM UTC One of the fastest growing killers of older Americans isn’t a disease or a disability. It’s the accidental fall. A new [CDC report](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db199.htm) finds the rate of Americans aged 65 or over who die as a result of unintentional falls has nearly doubled since 2000; 55% of older citizens who die of unintentional injuries do so from falls, up from 33% in 2000\. The death rate from falls increased from 29.6 per 100,000 in 2000 to 56.7 per 100,000 in 2013. There’s no single reason for the steep increase in deaths from falls, and it’s far from clear what may be behind the rise, says the National Center for Health Statistics’ Ellen Kramarow, the report’s co-author. She notes the report is based on death certificate data, and there may be better reporting on underlying causes of death than in the past. But one factor some researchers point to is the continuing increase in overall life expectancy. “People are living longer and living longer with conditions that make them frail and vulnerable to fall,” Kramarow says. Before the growth in end-of-life care, assisted living facilities, medications, and hospital procedures designed to extend our lives, many people died from diseases or ailments that previously couldn’t be cured or treated in a way that made them manageable. Today, older Americans can often stave off death from something like heart disease or diabetes with medication that can prolong life longer than ever before. U.S. life expectancy is now at a [record high](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/08/us-life-expectancy-hits-record-high/16874039/) of 78.8. But as we live longer, often with diseases that once might have killed us, we get more frail — and consequently, researchers say, more likely to suffer fatal injuries from a fall. Rates for other fatal accidental injuries like car crashes, suffocation, poisoning and fire-related deaths have remained steady over the last decade, according to the CDC. The death rate among seniors due to vehicle accidentsactually went down in 2013 to about 15 per 100,000 people from 20 per 100,000 in 2000. Overall, unintentional injuries resulted in almost 46,000 deaths for those 65 and older, making it the eighth leading cause of death. 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