Death Rates

1 Overview

Crude death rates are calculated within race, sex, and single year of age.

• TBD - Utility to grow/decay death rates to meet horizon year expectations.

2 Input Datasets

• Social Security Actuarial Life Table
• CDC WONDER ucd-icd10: 1999-2020: Underlying Cause of Death by Bridged-Race Categories
• CDC WONDER ucd-icd10-expanded: 2018-2021: Underlying Cause of Death by Single-Race Categories

3 Methods

• Death rates are calculated for ages < 85 from CDC WONDER by simply dividing raw deaths by population for each race, sex, and single year of age category after setting "Suppressed" raw deaths (values < 10) to values of 4.5 and 0 raw deaths to values of 1. This strategy avoids missing value records and implausible 0% death rates. The CDC WONDER data sources used for each base/launch year within race/ethnicity categories is shown below.
• For ages >= 85 the Social Security Actuarial Life Table is used for the chosen base/launch year, substituting the 2019 dataset for base/launch years 2020 and 2021 due to the outsize impact of COVID-19 on geriatric death rates. Note that there was no data published for 2012 or 2018 so those base/launch years default to the previous years of 2011 and 2017.