Working Paper: NBER ID: w23574
Authors: Dan A. Black; Yuchieh Hsu; Seth G. Sanders; Lynne Steuerle Schofield; Lowell J. Taylor
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 (NLS-OM) 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 (NHIS) matched to the U.S. Vital Statistics system, a dataset 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: Mortality; Old Age; Measurement Error; Demographics; Racial Disparities
JEL Codes: J1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| failure to match respondents to death records (C83) | underestimation of mortality rates at older ages (J17) |
| higher rates of missing mortality matching among certain racial groups (J15) | spurious inferences about lower mortality rates in these groups compared to whites (J78) |
| methuselah effect (C41) | overestimations of survival rates among older populations (J11) |