Racial Differences in Life Expectancy Among Elderly African Americans and Whites by Laura B. Shrestha

Author:Laura B. Shrestha [Shrestha, Laura B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138984448
Google: QCdXuAEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2019-03-22T05:29:28+00:00

Second, the 23,000 (at all ages) individuals originally excluded from the tabulations were assigned by sex, race, and age “according to the probable basis of the error” (Siegel, 1974, page 6). Finally, an additional 67,000 persons were added to the final modified file, the result of geocoding (Robinson, 1992).

Tabulations produced by Shrestha

While the official tabulations of the 1970 census greatly overstate the number of centenarians in the US population, the procedures employed by the US Bureau of the Census in the calculation of the unpublished adjusted estimates are likely to have underestimated the true population aged 100 and over. The procedure employed was to forward project the 1960 population using 1959–61 life table survival rates. This approach can be expected to underestimate the 1970 centenarian population for two reasons. First, further decreases in mortality in the decade following 1959–61 would cause the 1959–61 survival rates to overestimate the number of deaths in the decade. More importantly, because the US official life tables at the oldest ages for 1959–61 are based on the experience of Civil War veterans, “with improvements in medical technology and care for the aged, it is possible that mortality of the extreme aged has decreased and that survival rates have increased” (Siegel and Passel, 1976:561).

To estimate the “correct” size of the race- and sex-specific centenarian population in the United States in 1970, Siegel and Passel (ibid) employed various methodologies, including: (1) comparison with tabulations of Medicare records, (2) survival from prior censuses, and (3) population reconstruction using deaths. The calculated estimates are presented in Table 4.1

Table 4.1

Alternative Estimates of Population Aged 100 & Over, by Sex and Race: April 1, 1970 Estimation Method

All Classes

Whites

Blacks & Others

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