10/15/2025October 15, 2025Dementia death rates rose by 4.4% in 2024: statistics office
The number of people with dementia as the registered cause of death in Germany rose by 4.4% to 61,927 in 2024, the government’s statistics office Destatis said.
The figure is also 23.2% higher than the 10-year average from 2015-2024, signaling a relatively sharp rise in this area.
Well over half of those cases, 37,109, were women, with dementia now the leading single cause of death for women in Germany, followed by coronary heart disease and heart failure. For men, the three leading causes were coronary heart disease, tumors of the lungs and bronchi, and myocardial infarctions (heart attacks).
The higher dementia and Alzheimer’s prevalence among women is partly due to higher life expectancy, with almost 90% of dementia deaths hitting people aged 80 or older, but is also thought to have other as yet poorly understood contributing factors.
If you group heart and circulatory problems, such as various heart attacks and conditions and strokes, and different types of cancer together as one, these are still by far the most common causes of death for both sexes.
A total of 339,212 people died of heart and circulatory conditions, and 230,392 from malignant tumors (most commonly types of cancer) last year, making up 56.5% of all deaths in the country.
Overall, the 1.01 million total deaths in the country in 2024 was roughly 2% lower than the previous year.