evident in available data for the other racial groups. With the exception of Asians and other Pacific Islanders between 1990 and 1995, heart disease mortality declined for all racial groups.

Table 14–1B shows the minority/White ratios for heart disease. In 1950, Blacks were 1.3 times more likely than Whites to die of heart disease compared to 1.5 times more likely in 1995. Thus, although rates declined for both groups, Whites experienced a more rapid decline than Blacks, so that the gap between the two groups widened. In fact, the reduction in heart disease rates for Whites has been relatively larger than that for all other racial groups. Although these groups still have markedly lower rates of heart disease than Whites, the gap was narrower in 1995 than in the first year for which data were available.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. In 1996, 539,533 people died from cancer. Table 14–2A presents trends in age-adjusted cancer death rates. Similar to the pattern observed for heart disease, Blacks had the highest death rates from all cancers in 1995. All the other racial groups had cancer death rates that were about 35 percent lower than Whites. Unlike the pattern for heart disease, however, for which there was a general trend of declining rates for all groups, data in Table 14–2A show that through 1990, cancer death rates had been rising for all racial groups. There was a slight downturn between 1990 and 1995 for the White, Black, and Hispanic populations, while there was a consistent upward trend for the Native American or Alaska Native and Asian