Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics, Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates
| Details | life expectancy at birth, remaining life expectancy by age, probability of death by age |
|---|---|
| Topics | health, life expectancy, mortality |
| Source | CDC National Center for Health Statistics, the United States Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project (USALEEP) |
| Years Available | 2010 – 2015 |
| Geographies | tract |
| Public Edition or Subscriber-only | Public Edition |
| Download Available | yes |
| For more information | https://www.naphsis.org/usaleep |
| Last updated on PolicyMap | March 2021 |
Description:
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released the results of their Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project in September of 2018. For this project, NCHS calculated abridged life tables at the Census tract level. An “abridged life table” is a series of estimates of life expectancy for people of different ages grouped into multi-year cohorts.
To create these abridged life tables, NCHS worked with the National Vital Statistics System to geocode residences recorded on death certificates from 2010 to 2015 (inclusive). The Department of Housing and Urban Development Geocode Center performed the geocoding. Maine and Wisconsin are excluded from this study because they did not have geocoded death certificates for 2010. The life table calculations also required Census tract level population estimates. NCHS worked with the Census Bureau to create a set of custom 6-year population estimates for the years 2010–2015 using data from the 2010 Census and the 2011–2015 ACS for use in this project.
The NCHS used information on the location of residence and age of the deceased combined with the population estimates to build age patterns or “schedules of mortality” for 4,639 “model tracts.” Model tracts met two criteria—each had a population over 5,000 and one or more recorded deaths in each age group during the 6-year window.
Using schedules of mortality from the model tracts, the NCHS developed statistical models to predict death rates based on demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic variables. They used these models to fill in data for tracts with smaller populations, and for tracts with age groups that had “missing deaths” or no recorded deaths within an age group. For the model tracts, reported values for all age ranges are calculated directly from the death certificates and population estimates. For the tracts with some missing deaths, values predicted by the statistical models are used for the age groups that had no recorded deaths, and observed values are used for all other age ranges. For some tracts with low populations, all values are based on predictions from the statistical models. See the complete documentation of the methodology here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_02/sr02_181.pdf.