Recomputation of age-adjusted death rates and age-sex-adjusted birth rates for the United States, 1940-1990.

"Many authors have examined whether the National Center for Health Statistics should continue to use the 1940 U.S. population as the standard for the computation of age-sex-adjusted birth rates and age-adjusted death rates, or replace it by a more recent population. It is shown that standardization by using a single population as the standard leads to internally inconsistent results. The standardization technique suggested in this paper not only generates internally consistent rates, but also puts an end to the continuing debate as to which one of the actual populations should be used as the standard. The technique is applied to the U.S. data to recompute the adjusted birth and death rates for the years 1940-1990." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND ITA)