The Methuselah Effect: The Pernicious Impact of Unreported Deaths on Old-Age Mortality Estimates

Dan Black, Yu-Chieh Hsu, Seth G. Sanders, Lynne Steuerle Schofield and Lowell Taylor
Additional contact information
Yu-Chieh Hsu: University of Chicago
Seth G. Sanders: NORC
Lynne Steuerle Schofield: Swarthmore College

Demography, 2017, vol. 54, issue 6, No 1, 2024 pages

Abstract: Abstract We examine inferences about old-age mortality that arise when researchers use survey data matched to death records. We show that even small rates of failure to match respondents can lead to substantial bias in the measurement of mortality rates at older ages. This type of measurement error is consequential for three strands in the demographic literature: (1) the deceleration in mortality rates at old ages; (2) the black-white mortality crossover; and (3) the relatively low rate of old-age mortality among Hispanics, often called the “Hispanic paradox.” Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men matched to death records in both the U.S. Vital Statistics system and the Social Security Death Index, we demonstrate that even small rates of missing mortality matching plausibly lead to an appearance of mortality deceleration when none exists and can generate a spurious black-white mortality crossover. We confirm these findings using data from the National Health Interview Survey matched to the U.S. Vital Statistics system, a data set known as the “gold standard” (Cowper et al. 2002) for estimating age-specific mortality. Moreover, with these data, we show that the Hispanic paradox is also plausibly explained by a similar undercount.

Keywords: Old-age mortality; Black-white mortality crossover; Hispanic paradox (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13524-017-0623-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Methuselah Effect: The Pernicious Impact of Unreported Deaths on Old Age Mortality Estimates (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:demogr:v:54:y:2017:i:6:d:10.1007_s13524-017-0623-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13524

DOI: 10.1007/s13524-017-0623-x

Access Statistics for this article

Demography is currently edited by John D. Iceland, Stephen A. Matthews and Jenny Van Hook

More articles in Demography from Springer, Population Association of America (PAA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().