An estimated 4.49 million dog bites occur in the United States every year. Of those, roughly 757,000 are serious enough to require medical treatment, and between 40 and 80 result in death, depending on the year. That means on any given day, about 866 people visit an emergency department for a dog bite and 26 are admitted to the hospital.
Total Bites, ER Visits, and Hospitalizations
The 4.49 million annual figure comes from epidemiological estimates that account for bites never reported to authorities or insurers. Most dog bites are minor enough that people treat them at home, but a sizable share still sends people to the ER. In 2008, the most recent year with detailed federal hospital data, there were 316,200 emergency department visits and 9,500 inpatient hospital stays tied to dog bites. Given that the U.S. dog population has grown since then, current numbers are likely higher.
Fatal Dog Attacks
Fatal attacks are rare relative to the total number of bites, but the numbers have trended upward over the past two decades. From 2005 through 2019, dogs killed 521 Americans, an average of about 35 per year. That average climbed in subsequent years: 48 fatalities in 2019, 81 in 2021 (the highest single year on record in CDC data), and 58 in 2023. Altogether, CDC mortality data logged 662 deaths from dog attacks between 2005 and 2021.
The year-to-year swings are large enough that it’s hard to call this a smooth trend, but the general direction over the past decade has been upward compared to the early 2000s.
Who Gets Bitten Most Often
Children bear a disproportionate share of the risk. About 44% of all dog bites happen to people under 16. Kids are closer to a dog’s eye level, less able to read warning signals, and more likely to interact with dogs in ways that provoke a defensive response. Males are roughly 1.8 times more likely to be bitten over the course of their lifetime than females. Bite risk generally increases with age up to about 50, then levels off.
The majority of victims know the dog that bit them. Around 80% of reported bites come from the victim’s own pet or a neighbor’s dog. Only 10% to 20% involve strays. Even among owned dogs responsible for bites, just 17% of cases involved the victim’s own family pet in one large city study, meaning most bites come from a dog the person has met but doesn’t live with. Male dogs are overrepresented in bite incidents across multiple studies.
Breed and Bite Risk
Breed is one of the first things people ask about when looking at bite statistics, but the data is less clear-cut than headlines suggest. The American Veterinary Medical Association has reviewed the evidence extensively and concluded that breed alone is a poor predictor of whether an individual dog will bite. The variation in temperament within any single breed is substantial, and other factors, including training, whether the dog is neutered, how it’s socialized, and the context of the encounter, all play a larger role than genetics alone.
Visual identification of breed is also unreliable. Shelter staff, veterinarians, and witnesses frequently misidentify mixed-breed dogs, which means breed data in bite reports carries a built-in margin of error. The AVMA’s position is that breed-specific bans have not been shown to reduce the overall rate or severity of bite injuries in communities that adopt them.
The Financial Cost of Dog Bites
Dog bites are one of the most expensive liability claims in homeowners insurance. In 2024, U.S. insurers paid out $1.57 billion in dog-related injury claims. The average cost per claim jumped from $58,545 in 2023 to $69,272 in 2024, driven by rising medical costs and larger legal settlements. These figures only capture incidents that result in an insurance claim, so they represent the more serious end of the spectrum, not the full picture of all bites.
Why the Numbers May Be Underreported
The 4.49 million estimate already tries to account for underreporting, but it’s worth understanding how much goes uncounted. Many bites from a family pet or a friend’s dog are never reported to animal control, never result in an ER visit, and never generate an insurance claim. Survey-based studies consistently find higher bite rates than hospital or animal control records alone would suggest. The gap between “bites that happen” and “bites that get documented” is wide, which is why estimates vary across sources.
Fatality data is more reliable because deaths are tracked through official mortality records, but even nonfatal attack severity can be hard to compare across years when reporting methods and hospital coding practices change.