Mortality Dynamics of the U.S. Population by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1984-1999

Ward Kingkade, U.S. Census Bureau

The present analysis is devoted to Race/Origin profiles of mortality. Two key questions are of particular interest: 1) the resemblance between age-sex profiles of mortality of various Race/Origin groups; and 2) whether the Race/Origin mortality profiles appear to be converging or diverging over time. The proposed paper shall present 1980-1999 time series of age and sex-specific mortality rates, together with life table measures of longevity, by single-year ages, for three broad Race/Origin categories: Hispanics, Black Non-Hispanics, and all other Non-Hispanics. The extent to which the Race/Origin profiles of mortality resemble one another shall be assessed by the methodology of decomposing differences in life expectancy into the contributions of various age categories developed by Arriaga (1984). The same methodology applies to the crucial question of convergence in Race/Origin mortality patterns or lack thereof. The recent contribution of Vaupel and Romo (2003) shall be employed to express rates of convergence over time.