Mortality Rate

The crude mortality rate refers to the incidence of death per 1,000 people among a given population and is thus essentially the same as the crude death rate; it is therefore closely linked to life expectancy. Mortality should not be confused with morbidity, the incidence or prevalence of a given disease. Demographers typically rely on age-specific and sex-specific mortality rates, which measure the number of deaths of a given 5-year age group of males or females. Mortality rates vary considerably across the life cycle, depending on the particular social circumstances in which people live. Typically, mortality rates tend to be relatively high for infants (especially in economically underdeveloped societies) and low during childhood and young adulthood, and then they rise steadily as a person enters ...