Life expectancy measures and bootstrapped standard errors for linked census-NUMIDENT death data

Cheyenne Lonobile and Jennifer Van Hook

CES Technical Notes Series from Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau

Abstract: This technical note describes a methodology for using linked census-NUMIDENT data to estimate life expectancies and associated standard errors for the 1940 U.S. population, specifically for parents and their co-resident children present in the 100% 1940 census. We linked 1940 Census with NUMIDENT data and used the NUMIDENT date of death information to create estimates of life expectancy for the U.S. population and selected subgroups. Because it is possible to identify parents and siblings in the 1940 census data, analysts can estimate within-family correlation in age-at-death between parents and children and among siblings. This feature of the data also permits analysts to adjust regression models for unmeasured fixed family-level factors. The research demonstrates the feasibility and utility of using linked NUMIDENT death data to study mortality patterns and trends. Conducting this work requires careful cleaning of date-of-death data and bootstrapping methods to estimate standard errors for the life expectancy estimates. The technical note documents SAS and Stata code and instructions for those wishing to replicate these analyses. The code will be added to the IRE Code Library.

Keywords: 1940 Decennial; Numident (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
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https://www2.census.gov/ces/tn/CES-TN-2026-08.pdf Abstract (application/pdf)
https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/ced/apply-for-access.html?CES-TN-2026-08 First version, 2026 (application/pdf)
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