The Accuracy of Age Reporting Among Elderly African Americans: Evidence of a Birth Registration Effect

This paper expands on previous research that has documented relatively high levels of inconsistency in age information for elderly African Americans. Drawing on a sample of death certificates for Maryland-born African Americans purportedly aged 65-79 at death in 1985, the validity of age data in both death certificates and social security records is examined by linkage to a birth record. The commonly assumed relationship between availability of birth registration and quality of age reporting also is investigated. Among matches to a birth record, age on social security records is significantly more accurate than on death records. Age agreement between matched death and social security records closely reflects age validity as determined from birth records. Findings based on logistic regression analysis support the hypothesized birth registration effect: controlling for demographic characteristics, persons with a birth certificate exhibited greater age agreement on linked death certificates and social security records (odds ratio = 2.3).

Age-Linked Institutions and Age Reporting Among Older African Americans

With economic and technological development, numerical age became an important dimension of social differentiation in the United States. The vast majority of Americans now have the ability to report their own age and the ages of relatives with accuracy. Nevertheless, studies have found that age misreporting remains substantial for older African Americans. This paper describes levels of age misreporting and investigates the determinants of age reporting accuracy on the death certificates of a national sample of native-born African Americans aged 65+. Consistent with previous studies, levels of age misreporting are found to be high. When checked against childhood census records, only 53% of the death certificate ages are found to be correctly reported; slightly over 10% are misstated by five years or more. Multivariate results provide compelling evidence that the quality of age reporting critically depends on interaction with age-linked institutions

Consistency of Age Reporting on Death Certificates and Social Security Administration Records Among Elderly African-American Decedents

This paper investigates the quality of age reporting in vital statistics and Social Security/Medicare data among elderly African-Americans. The authors examine whether the death certificate or Social Security age is more likely to reflect accurately the decedents\u27 true age at death by matching their sample to the US Censuses of 1900, 1910 and 1920, and identify factors associated with consistency of age reporting on death certificates and social security records. The results reveal significant discrepancies in age at death data. Birth record availability and literacy were identified as key predictors of age agreement. The match to an early-life census record showed greater agreement with Social Security age than with death certificate age at death. The results have implications for the collection of age information in surveys of elderly African-Americans

Age Overstatement and Puerto Rican Longevity

Recent official statistics show that life expectancy among both inales and females in Puerto Rico exceeds that for males and females in the United States. Furthermore, the population of Puerto Rico appears to be one of the most longevous in the world, with levels of survival after age 45 exceeding that in all but a few countries. The validity of these longevity estimates is examined using various demographic techniques to investigate the accuracy of census and vital statistics data. The findings provide strong evidence of widespread overstatement of age at the older ages. Such overstatement produces mortality rates that are too low and thus overstate the expectation of life; as a result current life tables need to be modified

Differential mortality by ethnicity: Foreign-born Irish, Italians and Jews in New York city, 1979-81

This paper compares the mortality experience of foreign-born Irish, Italians and Jews in New York City in 1979-1981. For the Irish and Italian groups, 1980 census data were used to calculate age-specific and age-standardized death rates. For the Jewish group, denominator data were not available, so proportional mortality analysis was used. An estimate was made to show the degree to which standardized proportional mortality ratios approximated relative standard mortality measures. Major causes of death and other selected causes were examined. The results of this analysis support previous studies showing mortality is significantly greater among Irish-born immigrants than among the Italian born. The proportional mortality data suggest that the Jewish and Italian groups have cause of death distributions relatively similar to each other and dissimilar to the Irish group. Alcohol-related causes of death appear to be a major source of the uniqueness of the Irish mortality experience.mortality ethnicity immigration alcohol use

Melanoma after Exposure to PCB's

A report of a possible new carcinogenic hazard: PCBs, based on case-reports in a petrochemical plant