Death rates for men fell by 1.6 percent annually, and death rates for women were down by .8 percent each year from the early 1990s through 2003, according to the latest annual joint report from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute.

The overall rate of occurrence of cancer has not changed, the report notes, although lung cancer incidence has been dropping among men since 1975, while increasing among women.

Although the rate of lung cancer diagnoses has increased among women over the past 30 years, the rate of increase has slowed in the last several years, the report authors note. Rates were higher among women over 65, while they declined among women 45 to 65 and remained the same for women under 45 years of age.

Among men, declining death rates were reported for lung, prostate, colon, rectum and pancreatic cancers, as well as for leukemia. A higher death rate among men was reported for esophageal and liver cancer, while the rate for kidney cancer and melanoma did not change.

Among women, death rates were down for colon, rectum, kidney, cervix and bladder cancers, as well as for leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma. Women's death rates were stable for pancreatic, ovarian and uterine cancer.

The rate of diagnosis of breast cancer, which had been increasing since the 1980s, leveled off between 2001 and 2003, a change that some health experts believe may be linked to a decline in hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, among post-menopausal women.

A decline in smoking -- which has occurred faster among men than women -- is credited with lowering the cancer death rate. Earlier cancer detection and treatment advances are also contributing to the decline in cancer deaths.