NEW YORK (AP) – Older U.S. adults are increasingly dying from unintentional falls, according to a new federal report published Wednesday.

From 2003 to 2023, death rates from falls rose more than 70 percent for adults ages 65 to 74, the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The rate increased more than 75 percent for people 75 to 84, and more than doubled for seniors 85 and older.

“Falls continue to be a public health problem worth paying attention to,” said Geoffrey Hoffman, a University of Michigan researcher who was not involved in the new report. “It’s curious that these rates keep rising.”

The CDC researchers did not try to answer why death rates from falls are increasing. But experts say there may be a few reasons, like gradually improving our understanding of the role falls play in deaths and more people living longer—to ages when falls are more likely to have deadly consequences.

More than 41,000 retirement-age Americans died of falls in 2023, the most recent year for which final statistics based on death certificates are available. That suggests that falls were blamed in about 1 of every 56 deaths in older Americans that year.

More than half of those 41,000 deaths were people 85 and older, the CDC found.

Falls can cause head injuries or broken bones that can lead to permanent disability and trigger a cascade of other health problems. A number of factors can contribute to falls, including changes in hearing and vision and medications that can cause light-headedness.

Death rates varied widely from state to state. In 2023, Wisconsin had the highest death rates from falls, followed by Minnesota, Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont. Wisconsin’s rate was more than five times higher than the rate of the lowest state, Alabama.

Ice and wintry weather may partly explain why fatal falls were more common in states in the upper Midwest and New England, but experts also pointed to other things at play, like differences in how well falls are reported and to what extent they are labeled a cause of death.

“We’ve yet to unravel why you see such differences in state rates,” said Mr. Hoffman, who studies falls among the elderly.

Staying active can help people avoid falls, experts say.