Fewer African Americans are dying from cancer, but compared with white Americans their length of survival is shorter and the fatality rate is still far higher, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The conclusions were part of a new American Cancer Society report on African-Americans and cancer.

While there are many reasons for the racial disparity, the main cause is that a larger proportion of African Americans are poor, American Cancer Society chief medical officer Otis Brawley said in a statement.

“African Americans are disproportionately represented in lower socioeconomic groups,” he said. “People with lower socioeconomic status have higher cancer death rates.”

Tim Byers, a doctor from the Colorado School of Public health, published research in 2008 that shows the link between socioeconomic status and cancer. For those of lower classes diagnosed with cancer, there was a 35 percent greater likelihood that they will die.

The most common form of cancer among African American males is prostate cancer at 40 percent of cases, 15 percent have lung cancer and 9 percent colon and rectal cancer.

For African-American women, breast cancer is the most common, with lung cancer second with 13 percent, and 11 percent colon and rectal cancer.

Compared to whites, death rates were 32 percent higher among African-American men and 16 percent higher among African-American women in 2007, the last year measured.

The study said that the reduction in smoking-related cancer was due to the fact that the percentage of African-American men smoking has fallen faster than their white counterparts.

There are expected to be 168,900 new cancer cases and 65,540 cancer deaths among African Americans in 2011, the study said.

(Reporting by Wendell Marsh; Editing by Greg McCune)

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(Reuters)