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© 1998 Oxford University Press

research-article

A method for calculating age-weighted death proportions for comparison purposes

Luiz F Marcopitoa and Jesse A Berlinb

aDivision of Epidemiology, Escola Paullsta de Medicina/ UNIFESP Rua Pedro de Toledo, 675, 04039-032 Säo Paulo, SP, Brazil
bCenter for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center Philadelphia, PA, USA

OBJECTIVE: To introduce a method for calculating age-weighted death proportions (wDP) for comparison purposes.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A methodological study using secondary data from the municipality of Säo Paulo, Brazil (1980–1994) was carried out. Fiist, deaths are weighted in terms of years of potential life lost before the age of 100 years. Then, in order to eliminate distortion of comparisons among proportions of years of potential life lost before the age of 100 years (PPYLL-100), the denominator is set to that of a standard age distribution of deaths for all causes. Conventional death proportions (DP)PPYLL-100, and wDP were calculated.

RESULTS: Populations in which deaths from a particular cause occur at older ages exhibit lower wDP than those in which deaths occur at younger ages. The sum of all cause-specific wDP equals one only when the test population has exactly the same age distribution of deaths for all causes as that of the standard population.

CONCLUSIONS: Age-weighted death proportions improve the information given by conventional DP, and are strongly recommended for comparison purposes.

Keywords Epidemiology, epidemiologic methods, mortality, age-standardization, proportionate mortality

Accepted 24 March 1998


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