Document Type

Article

Abstract

The Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set offers a means to estimate the level of misreporting of race on State death certificates of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) infant deaths. It also provides the opportunity to analyze for infant deaths regardless of race, demographic, socioeconomic, and health data contained on the birth certificate but not the death certificate. The Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set used for this report was compiled using the 1983 live birth cohort. This cohort, by definition, consists of all infants born alive within the U.S. during calendar year 1983. The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) created the linked file with assistance from the state health departments. The linked data file, or numerator file, consists of records of deaths of infants born in 1983, linked with their live birth records. The second file, or denominator file, consists of records of all live births occurring during 1983, and it offers the opportunity to compute infant mortality rates for the cohort. The linkage of birth record to the death record offers a wealth of new information not previously available when analyzing infant mortality record data.

Publication Date

1992

Publisher

Indian Health Service, Staff Office of Planning, Evaluation and Research, Rockville, MD 20857

COinS