Age - Adjusted Death Rates by Paul

Mortality or death rates are often used as measures of health status for a population. Population-based incidence or morbidity data are available in North Carolina in a few areas such as cancer and certain communicable diseases, but for most chronic diseases we know only how many people died from the disease and not how many are living with it. Given the importance of data from death certificates in measuring the health of populations, it is important that valid comparisons of death rates are made. Many factors affect the risk of death, including age, race, gender, occupation, education, and income. By far the strongest of these factors affecting the risk of death is age. Populations often differ in age composition. A “young” population has a higher proportion of persons in the younger age groups, while an “old” population has a higher proportion in the older age groups. Therefore, it is often important to control for differences among the age distributions of populations when making comparisons among death rates to assess the relative risk of death. This Statistical Primer describes how age-adjusted death rates are calculated and discusses some related issues.