Demography - American Sociological Association

In an Excel spreadsheet (hand in to me), calculate the Cause Specific Death Rate for the White
and the minority population of your state, by sex (male and female), for heart disease (Diseases of
the heart), cancer (Malignant neoplasms, all), stroke (Cerebrovascular diseases), motor vehicle
accidents, homicide, suicide, and other causes of your choice.** Interpret these rates. What race
differentials in these causes of death do you observe? What is the difference between endogenous
and exogenous causes of death? Which of the causes listed above are endogenous and which are
exogenous?
**Use 100,000 as your constant (k) rather than 1,000.
Instructions For Downloading Data From the NCHS Website:
Deaths in 10-year age groups and deaths by cause:
Go to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website (www.cdc.gov/nchs)
Click on Tabulated State Data, then Healthy Women: State Trends in Health and Mortality
The “Overview” will give to a link to the Beyond 20/20 Browser. Click on browser
Download the Browser
Click open when you get to the question, “Would you like to open the file or save it to your
computer?”
Click next when you get to the InstallShield® Wizard, license agreement (accept), and customer
information, and complete set-up.
Click install and then finish
Click on tables and then Mortality tables
Select Cause Specific Mortality
Click on the “eye” icon for Cause specific mortality
Open the program from its current location
Use arrow keys on either side of the window to select your desired categories (underlined in
blue): Age (no change), State (your state), Sex (men/women), Race (White/Minority), Year
(1997-1999), Cause of Death (no change), Mortality (Count)
Once you have your desired settings, save each as an Excel Worksheet with the following names:
Deaths by Age (White Males), Deaths by Age (White Females), Deaths by Age (Minority Males),
and Deaths by Age (Minority Females). Save to your desktop or a floppy/zip disk.
Create one new Excel spreadsheet for your data, with 10-year age groups (25-85+) in the first
column, followed by columns for White Males, White Females, Minority Males, Minority
Females (All causes)
Because counts comprise 3 years of data (1997-1999), divide all figures by 3.
Use All (2000-Adjusted) figures for calculation of the CDRs and CSDRs, not the total of your 10year
age groups (because these do not include persons under 25)
1997 infant deaths, by race
Go to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website (www.cdc.gov/nchs)
Click on Tabulated State Data, then Deaths
Scroll down to GMIII_1_97 (627 pages)
Click View/Download PDF (directly underneath)
Copy down the number of deaths under age 1 from all causes for your state, for Blacks and
Whites (males and females are recorded separately, you must add these together)
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