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. 2012 Aug;49(3):773-96.
doi: 10.1007/s13524-012-0107-y.

Uncrossing the U.S black-white mortality crossover: the role of cohort forces in life course mortality risk

Ryan K Masters  1
Affiliations

Uncrossing the U.S black-white mortality crossover: the role of cohort forces in life course mortality risk

Ryan K Masters. Demography. 2012 Aug.

Abstract

In this article, I examine the black-white crossover in U.S. adult all-cause mortality, emphasizing how cohort effects condition age-specific estimates of mortality risk. I employ hierarchical age-period-cohort methods on the National Health Interview Survey-Linked Mortality Files between 1986 and 2006 to show that the black-white mortality crossover can be uncrossed by factoring out period and cohort effects of mortality risk. That is, when controlling for variations in cohort and period patterns of U.S. adult mortality, the estimated age effects of non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white U.S. adult mortality risk do not cross at any age. This is the case for both men and women. Further, results show that nearly all the recent temporal change in U.S. adult mortality risk was cohort driven. The findings support the contention that the non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white U.S. adult populations experienced disparate cohort patterns of mortality risk and that these different experiences are driving the convergence and crossover of mortality risk at older ages.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Logged age-specific mortality risk of U.S. black and white male populations across time. Data are from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/life_tables.htm) aDenotes the age at black-white crossover.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Logged single-year age-specific adult mortality risks and logged five-year age-specific mortality rates of U.S. black and white males and females, NHIS-LMF 1986–2006
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Fitted logged mortality risks of U.S. black and white male and female adjusted samples of NHIS-LMF 1986–2006, and fitted logged mortality rates from HAPC-CCREMs
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
HAPC-CCREM estimates of random period and cohort effects of U.S. black and white male and female mortality rates, NHIS-LMF 1986–2006
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Ratios of U.S. black and white men’s and women’s older-age mortality rates in the NHIS-LMF 1986–2006, by birth cohort
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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