When Americans Die: The Seasonality of Death (2024)
Winter is the deadliest season, driven by respiratory illness, while some causes like drowning invert the calendar and peak in summer.
Key findings
- Death has a season. January was the deadliest month of 2024 with 295,570 deaths, 21.8% more than the quietest month, September (242,575).
- The winter peak is driven by respiratory illness: flu and pneumonia deaths ran highest in January (7,280) and lowest in September (2,941), a 147.5% swing.
- Some causes invert the calendar. Drownings peaked in July (723) and nearly vanished in December (179), the summer mirror image of winter respiratory deaths.
- The seasonality is large enough to shape hospital and funeral demand: roughly 52,995 more Americans died in the peak month than the trough.
Americans do not die evenly through the year. This counts every 2024 death by the month it occurred, and tracks two causes that pull in opposite directions across the calendar. Winter is the deadliest season overall, led by respiratory infections that thrive in the cold months and strain older hearts and lungs. Summer brings its own, smaller spikes, most visibly in drownings. These are exact counts from the near-census of death records.
Seasonality, 2024
All deaths by month
| Category | Deaths |
|---|---|
| January | 295,570 |
| February | 255,934 |
| March | 264,079 |
| April | 249,780 |
| May | 250,689 |
| June | 243,020 |
| July | 249,349 |
| August | 251,375 |
| September | 242,575 |
| October | 255,320 |
| November | 248,698 |
| December | 276,075 |
Opposite seasons: flu/pneumonia vs drownings
| Category | Flu and pneumonia deaths | Drowning deaths |
|---|---|---|
| January | 7,280 | 211 |
| February | 5,012 | 212 |
| March | 4,746 | 254 |
| April | 3,869 | 281 |
| May | 3,503 | 486 |
| June | 3,131 | 684 |
| July | 3,134 | 723 |
| August | 2,980 | 539 |
| September | 2,941 | 353 |
| October | 3,365 | 239 |
| November | 3,339 | 188 |
| December | 5,012 | 179 |
By month
| Month | All deaths | Flu/pneumonia | Drownings |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 295,570 | 7,280 | 211 |
| February | 255,934 | 5,012 | 212 |
| March | 264,079 | 4,746 | 254 |
| April | 249,780 | 3,869 | 281 |
| May | 250,689 | 3,503 | 486 |
| June | 243,020 | 3,131 | 684 |
| July | 249,349 | 3,134 | 723 |
| August | 251,375 | 2,980 | 539 |
| September | 242,575 | 2,941 | 353 |
| October | 255,320 | 3,365 | 239 |
| November | 248,698 | 3,339 | 188 |
| December | 276,075 | 5,012 | 179 |
Month the death occurred. Flu/pneumonia is ICD-10 J09 to J18; drownings are W65 to W74. Exact counts; no sampling margins of error.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
CDC/NCHS Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death Public Use File
- Vintage:
- 2024
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- annual
A near-census of U.S. death records for the year, drawn from death certificates and coded to ICD-10. Each row is one death, with the underlying cause and all contributing (multiple) causes, age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, month and day of death, place and manner of death (natural, accident, suicide, homicide), marital status, education, autopsy, and disposition. It supports analysis of what Americans die of and how that varies by age and demographics.
Every U.S. death is registered on a death certificate, which NCHS compiles, codes to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), and releases as an annual public-use micro-file. Each record carries one underlying cause plus all contributing causes.
The file covers essentially all registered deaths in the data year, not a probability sample. Statistics are exact counts; there are no sampling weights and no sampling margins of error.
To protect confidentiality, the public-use file omits state and county of residence and occurrence. Analyses here are national and demographic (by cause, age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, month, manner, and place of death). State-level figures require CDC WONDER or the restricted-use file.
Causes follow ICD-10. Alongside the underlying cause, NCHS provides standard recodes (358, 113, and 39 groups) used in its publications, and the full list of entity-axis and record-axis contributing conditions.
- The public-use file has no state or county geography, so it cannot be mapped sub-nationally.
- Cause of death depends on how certifiers complete death certificates; coding conventions and ill-defined ("garbage") codes affect some categories.
- The final annual file lags roughly a year behind the data year; provisional counts (via CDC WONDER) are more timely but less detailed.
- Age is reported in several recodes; very fine demographic cross-tabulations can be thin for rare causes.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Administrative near-census (exact counts)
- Weighting:
- None (not a weighted sample)
Suggested citation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2024 Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death Public Use File. Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-24.