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Life Table Analysis System

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MCOD Corrections

In July 2011, the LTAS team discovered several problems associated with earlier releases of some MCOD rate files. The following message was sent to registered users:

These problems are summarized in Table 1 and fixed in November 2011. A message was sent to notify users of the corrected rate files available for download at an ftp site. The current location is: http://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/LTAS-NET/.

The updated files are also included in the latest LTAS.NET version 3.0.5.

Table 1: Problems associated with earlier releases of the U.S. and State LTAS.NET MCOD rate files

Problem US MCOD Rate 1960 – 2002 US MCOD Rate 1960 – 2005 US MCOD Rate 1960 – 2007 State MCOD Rate 1960 – 2005 State MCOD Rate 1960 – 2007
Date Released/Prepared 09/2007 12/2008 08/2010 12/2008 09/2010
Rates for age 85+ too low 1 Yes No No No No
Rates in 1960-64 for minors without codes too high (i.e., not assigned zero) 2 No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Rates in 1965-69 for minors without codes too high (i.e., adjusted according to the general rule) 3 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
State rates too low or high in certain years 4 Not Applicable Not Applicable Not Applicable Yes Yes
  1. Rate denominators were inadvertently created as the product of 2. 5 and MCOD counts from all minors in a sex/race/age/calendar combination if the population in that cell was less than the product (2.5 x MCOD counts); however, this only affected the 85+ age category. This problem also existed with the MCOD rate files used in previous versions of LTAS (i.e., PC-LTAS).
  2. For minors 057, 092, 093, 101 and 109, no codes existed before 1968, so the MCOD rates for the calendar period 1960-64 should be zero. MCOD rates for 1965-1969 were inadvertently copied back for 1960-64, resulting in 1960-64 MCOD rates that were too high (should be zero) for these minors.
  3. For minors 057, 092, 093, 101 and 109, no codes existed before 1968, so the MCOD rates for the calendar period 1965-69 should be calculated as (MCOD counts in 1968 + MCOD counts in 1969)/(total population size for years 1965 through 1969). However, MCOD rates for 1965-1969 were inadvertently adjusted by (5/2), resulting in 1965-69 MCOD rates that were too high for these minors.
  4. State codes inadvertently were not converted to Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) codes in three calendar periods (1980-84, 1985-89, and 1990-94). See state-to-FIPS code conversion table below. This caused the MCOD rates to be too high for some states (usually smaller states) and too low for others (usually larger states). The LTAS website previously had incorrect 1960-2007 state MCOD rates for download. State MCOD 1960-2005 rates were not available on the website for download, but were released upon request. Please note that because of a change in the data use agreement with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), we can no longer provide state mortality rate files. If you need individual state rate files, please contact NCHS to obtain the mortality data, and follow the instructions in the LTAS.NET manual to create them. If you have problem in create the files, please contact us for assistance.

Table 2: Conversion between state and FIPS codes in NCHS data

State Code FIPS Code State Abbreviation
1 1 Alabama AL
2 2 Alaska AK
3 4 Arizona AZ
4 5 Arkansas AR
5 6 California CA
6 8 Colorado CO
7 9 Connecticut CT
8 10 Delaware DE
9 11 District of Columbia DC
10 12 Florida FL
11 13 Georgia GA
12 15 Hawaii HI
13 16 Idaho ID
14 17 Illinois IL
15 18 Indiana IN
16 19 Iowa IA
17 20 Kansas KS
18 21 Kentucky KY
19 22 Louisiana LA
20 23 Maine ME
21 24 Maryland MD
22 25 Massachusetts MA
23 26 Michigan MI
24 27 Minnesota MN
25 28 Mississippi MS
26 29 Missouri MO
27 30 Montana MT
28 31 Nebraska NE
29 32 Nevada NV
30 33 New Hampshire NH
31 34 New Jersey NJ
32 35 New Mexico NM
33 36 New York NY
34 37 North Carolina NC
35 38 North Dakota ND
36 39 Ohio OH
37 40 Oklahoma OK
38 41 Oregon OR
39 42 Pennsylvania PA
40 44 Rhode Island RI
41 45 South Carolina SC
42 46 South Dakota SD
43 47 Tennessee TN
44 48 Texas TX
45 49 Utah UT
46 50 Vermont VT
47 51 Virginia VA
48 53 Washington WA
49 54 West Virginia WV
50 55 Wisconsin WI
51 56 Wyoming WY

Both codes were reported starting 1980. State code must be converted to FIPS to create rate files.

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