Report of the Second Workshop on Age-Adjustment

Two workshops were convened by the National Center for Health Statistics to reexamine technical and policy issues related to the age-adjustment of mortality statistics. The first workshop examined technical issues and problems related to the calculation and interpretation of age-adjusted death rates. The results of the second workshop, the focus of this report, are a set of recommendations to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Second Workshop recommended that a new standard based on the year 2000 population be adopted after nearly 50 years of using the 1940 U.S. population as the standard. This standard was recommended to: 1) bring departmental coherence to the age-adjustment issue, 2) to facilitate public understanding, and 3) to address technical concerns. In addition, the Workshop recommended that a periodic review process be instituted to ensure the continuing appropriateness of the standard. Implementation of the year 2000 standard has implications for the presentation and interpretation of mortality patterns based on age-adjusted death rates.

Keywords: age-adjustment, population standard, mortality

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007