Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, claiming the lives of nearly 10 million people every year. The incidence of the disease is on the rise due to population ageing, smoking, alcohol consumption, unhealthy diets, sedentary lifestyles, and air pollution. But as well as damaging human health, cancer also harms the economy – it inflicts a huge financial burden on countries through reduced productivity, labour losses, and investment reductions.

The health and economic burdens of cancers are recognised as an urgent matter, as demonstrated by US President Biden’s reignition of the Cancer Moonshot initiative, the World Health Organization’s Global Action Plan for the Prevalence and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals target 3.4 – reduce pre-mature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one-third through prevention and treatment by 2030. Yet despite this urgency, the global economic cost of cancers has yet to be comprehensively investigated.

To address this gap and help policymakers intervene in cancer-related death and disability, an international team of researchers set out to estimate the economic cost of 29 cancers in 204 countries and territories, covering most countries in the world. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) – Oncology, used a comprehensive modelling framework estimating the macroeconomic cost of cancer in lost GDP.

“Many of the current economic studies on cancer are static, missing out on the future consequences of current loss in labour and treatment costs,” said co-author of the study Michael Kuhn, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis’ Economic Frontiers programme director.

“Our work is pioneering in the sense that it estimates the macroeconomic cost of cancer using a model that embraces many of the economic adjustment mechanisms, incorporating changes in labour supply due to cancer mortality and morbidity, as well as the loss in capital investments related to treatment costs.”

The study estimated the global economic cost of cancers from 2020–2050 to fall around $25.2 trillion in international dollars, which is equivalent to an annual tax of 0.55 per cent on global gross domestic product. The researchers also identified the type of cancers that incurred the highest economic burden, with lung cancer leading in this respect, followed by colon and rectum cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, and leukaemia.

The findings are a further indication that the health and economic costs of cancers are distributed unevenly across countries and regions. China and the United States face the largest economic costs of cancers in absolute terms, accounting for 24.1 per cent and 20.8 per cent of the total global burden, respectively. And while most cancer deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, their share of the economic cost of cancers is only about half.

“The four economically most damaging cancers are all amenable to primary and secondary preventions, such as smoking, diet and alcohol interventions, and increased screening,” noted Kuhn. “This reveals the large potential for policy interventions worldwide, which will help curb the trade-off between the high disease burden and the high economic burden.”

The authors stress that investing in effective public health interventions to reduce the burden of cancers is essential for protecting global health and economic wellbeing.