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Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English volume

Cause-specific death rate

Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English vol.
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Cause-specific death rate  (CAUSE-SPECIFIC death rate)


Health statistics 1 encompass morbidity statistics, but also cover all aspects of the health of a population, and are generally taken to include statistics of cause-specific mortality 2. The classification of deaths by cause of death 3 is made difficult because in many cases there may not be a single cause of death 4 but multiple causes of death 5 or joint causes of death 5. When this is the case we may distinguish between the immediate cause of death 6 and the underlying cause of death 7 or, looking at the problem from a different point of view, we may distinguish between the primary cause of death 8 or principal cause of death 8 and the secondary cause of death 9, contributory cause of death 9 or associated cause of death 9. The cause-specific death rate 10 is generally expressed per 100,000 population. The ratio of the number of deaths from a specific cause to the number of deaths from all causes is referred to as the cause-specific death ratio 11. Such ratios calculated for specific age groups or the general population provide information of the underlying structure of causes of death 12★. More...