Affiliation:
1. Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
Abstract
This study investigates age reporting on the death certificates of older white Americans. We link a sample of death certificates for native-born whites aged 85+ in 1985 to Social Security Administration records and to records of the U.S. censuses of 1900, 1910, and 1920. When ages in these sources are compared, inconsistencies are found to be minimal, even beyond age 95. Results show little distortion and no systematic biases in the reported age distribution of deaths. To explore the effect of age misreporting on old-age mortality, we estimate “corrected” age-specific death rates by the extinct-generation method for the U.S. white cohort born in 1885. With few exceptions, corrected and uncorrected rates in single years differ by less than 3% and are not systematically biased. When we compare corrected rates with those for the same birth cohort in France, Japan, and Sweden, we find that white American mortality at older ages is exceptionally low.
Reference34 articles.
1. Mortality of the Aged;Bayo;Transactions of the Society of Actuaries,1972
2. Mortality Estimation From Registered Deaths in Less Developed Countries;Bennett;Demography,1984
3. A Method for Estimating Year of Birth Using Social Security Number;Block;American Journal of Epidemiology,1983
4. Mortality Crossovers: Reality or Bad Data?;Coale;Population Studies,1986
5. Defects in Data on Old-Age Mortality in the United States: New Procedures for Calculating Mortality Schedules and Life Tables at the Highest Ages;Coale;Asian and Pacific Population Forum,1990
Cited by
54 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献