  Under appropriate assumptions the energy of wave equations with damping and
variable coefficients $c(x)u_{tt}-\hbox{div}(b(x)\nabla u)+a(x)u_t =h(x)$ has
been shown to decay. Determining the rate of decay for the higher order
energies involving the $k$th order spatial and time derivatives has been an
open problem with the exception of some sparse results obtained for $k=1,2,3$.
We establish estimates that optimally relate the higher order energies with the
first order energy by carefully analyzing the effects of linear damping. The
results concern weighted (in time) and also pointwise (in time) energy decay
estimates. We also obtain $L^\infty$ estimates for the solution $u$. As an
application we compute explicit decay rates for all energies which involve the
dimension $n$ and the bounds for the coefficients $a(x)$ and $b(x)$ in the case
$c (x)=1$ and $h(x)=0.$
