What killed Americans in 1900 vs. 2010
By Kyle Kim, Los Angeles Times
Americans aren’t dying the way they used to. The data come from an article published by the New England Journal of Medicine, which combed through 200 years worth of its back issues to look into how Americans die.
The article was originally published in 2012, but became a top post on Reddit this week after computer scientist Randy Olson posted a reworked version. We created a chart to more clearly show the changing causes of death.
The most visually striking difference is the enormous decline of infectious diseases (pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, etc). Advances in medicine and society have largely eradicated many of these diseases that were an overwhelming cause of death in 1900.