How many people die in Hungary and of what?

Main cause

Every year approximately 50 million people die in the world, 130,000 of them in Hungary.

This number has been relatively consistent in the past 10-15 years; previously it was significantly higher, reaching a peak in 1993 with 150,000 deaths.

As for the most common cause: cardiovascular diseases are by far the leading condition.

In 2018, the last year for which detailed statistics are already available, they accounted for 64.7 thousand people, i.e. 50 percent of all deaths.

 

It should be noted that this is the most common category used for very old people who, in the past, were said to have died ‘of old age’. The death rate in this category is relatively stable: in 1993 it affected 77.3 thousand people, which also made up nearly 50 percent of the total mortality number.

Cancer

The second most common cause is cancer, which claimed the lives of 33.2 thousand people in 2018, making up over a quarter of all deaths.

It is particularly interesting here that if we look into the historical data, we can see a continuous increase, i.e. the proportion of this type of disease in mortality figures is getting higher and higher. While in 1960 the rate was 17 percent, in 1970 it was 19, in 1990 it was 21 percent, and it already reached 25 percent at the turn of the millennium, so the fact that since then it has stopped growing has to be considered a positive change, which is clearly due to increasingly effective therapies. (50 years ago practically none of the types of cancer were curable, while today the recovery prospects are fairly good in many cases).

Respiratory diseases

Diseases of the respiratory system are the third most common cause according to the data of the Central Statistical Office, accounting for 6.2 percent of all cases, which in 2018 meant 8,113 people.

In this category there has been a considerable improvement: 100-120 years ago tuberculosis was responsible for a huge number of deaths, leading to mortalities at a relatively young age. By now this terrible disease has been defeated; however, an earlier issue of the CSO Statistical Review revealed an interesting figure:

nowadays approximately as many people die of lung cancer as 100 years ago of TB.

One positive change is that lung cancer occurs at a much later age than TB did in the past (although it is still considered premature with today’s life expectancy being much higher). There is another difference, namely that while TB could not be prevented, as it was an endemic disease caused by poverty, a large proportion of lung cancer deaths can be attributed to smoking, so there is no doubt if someone avoids this harmful addiction, they are much less prone to the disease.

Accidents

Diseases of the digestive system account for 5 percent of all deaths (6,500 people), showing a marked decline since the 1990’s. They are followed by accidents, in which 3,664 people were killed (2.8 percent) last year. There is an improving trend here, too: the number of people killed in accidents has halved since the 1980’s. In recent years around 6-7 hundred people have died in road accidents annually, which is a significant improvement from the yearly 1,500 of 20 years ago.

Suicide

The next specified cause of death is suicide, which accounted for 1,656 cases in 2018, or 1.3 percent of all cases. Although this number still appears to be very high, it shows a huge improvement: in 1980 there were still nearly 5,000 cases, at the turn of the millennium there were 3,200, and even in 2010 the number was still 2,500.
Infectious diseases

Infectious diseases were responsible for 728 deaths, which is 0.5 percent of all cases. This number will be definitely higher this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, this category has shown the largest decline in the last 100 years: while the number of deaths in 1930 was still over 23,000, by 1952 it fell below 10,000, a few years later below 5,000, until it dropped to less than 1,000 in the 1980’s.

According to CSO data, the number of deaths from unspecified ‘other causes’ is 12.4 thousand or 9.5 percent.

Gender differences

There are some causes which show a substantial difference between men and women. In 2018, the number of cancer-related deaths was 17,616 and 14,969, respectively, meaning that 18 percent more men died of cancer than women. In case of heart disease the proportion of women was higher: among vascular diseases, cerebrovascular disease in particular, with 6,416 women per 4,850 men. Liver disease affected far more men than women: the numbers were 2412 and 931. The ratio was similar for road accidents: 530 men and 205 women lost their lives on the roads. As for suicides, the difference is even more remarkable: 1,276 men and 380 women took their own lives.