Mortality


The risk of death for both sexes is high immediately after birth, diminishing during childhood and reaching a minimum at 10 to 12 years of age. The risk then rises again, until at late ages it surpasses that of the first year of life.

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The expectation of life at birth is the most efficient index of the general level of mortality of a population. In ancient Greece and Rome the average life expectancy was about 28 years; in the early 21st century life expectancy averaged about 78 years in most industrialized countries. In countries with a high rate of HIV infection, however, the average life expectancy was as low as 33 years. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.

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Illustrations of those killed in battle and of their severed parts find particular prominence in ancient Egyptian art. The campaign of the 13th-century- bc Egyptian king Ramses II against the Hittites, in particular the Battle of Kadesh, is recorded in gruesome detail on the battle reliefs of 19th- and….

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In most countries, however, a stillbirth was defined as "the birth of a fetus, after 28 weeks of pregnancy, in which pulmonary respiration does not occur". Ideally, all mortality estimation would be done using vital statistics and census data.

Mortality rate

Census data will give detailed information about the population at risk of death. The vital statistics provide information about live births and deaths in the population. This is especially true in developing countries, countries that are in conflict, areas where natural disasters have caused mass displacement, and other areas where there is a humanitarian crisis [12]. Household surveys or interviews are another way in which mortality rates are often assessed.

There are several methods to estimate mortality in different segments of the population. One such example is the sisterhood method. This technique involves researchers estimating maternal mortality by contacting women in populations of interest and asking whether or not they have a sister, if the sister is of child-bearing age usually 15 and conducting an interview or written questions about possible deaths among sisters. The sisterhood method, however, does not work in cases where sisters may have died before the sister being interviewed was born.

Orphanhood surveys estimate mortality by questioning children are asked about the mortality of their parents. It has often been criticized as an adult mortality rate that is very biased for several reasons. The adoption effect is one such instance in which orphans often do not realize that they are adopted.

Christopher Hitchens: Mortality Gives Meaning to Our Lives (2011)

Additionally, interviewers may not realize that an adoptive or foster parent is not the child's biological parent. There is also the issue of parents being reported on by multiple children while some adults have no children, thus are not counted in mortality estimates. Widowhood surveys estimate adult mortality by responding to questions about the deceased husband or wife. One limitation of the widowhood survey surrounds the issues of divorce, where people may be more likely to report that they are widowed in places where there is the great social stigma around being a divorcee.

Another limitation is that multiple marriages introduce biased estimates, so individuals are often asked about first marriage. Biases will be significant if the association of death between spouses, such as those in countries with large AIDS epidemics.

Sampling refers to the selection of a subset of the population of interest to efficiently gain information about the entire population. Samples should be representative of the population of interest. Cluster sampling is an approach to non-probability sampling; this is an approach in which each member of the population is assigned to a group cluster , and then clusters are randomly selected, and all members of selected clusters are included in the sample.

Often combined with stratification techniques in which case it is called multistage sampling , cluster sampling is the approach most often used by epidemiologists.

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In areas of forced migration, there is more significant sampling error. Thus cluster sampling is not the ideal choice. The ten countries with the highest crude death rate, according to the CIA World Factbook estimates, are: According to the World Health Organization , the ten leading causes of death in ranked by death per , population were: Recent Examples on the Web The mortality stats also showed an increase in suicides, which have been rising steadily for nearly two decades and have been ranked as the tenth most common cause of death in the US since First Known Use of mortality 15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1.

Learn More about mortality. Resources for mortality Time Traveler! Explore the year a word first appeared.

Phrases Related to mortality infant mortality mortality rate. Time Traveler for mortality The first known use of mortality was in the 15th century See more words from the same century. English Language Learners Definition of mortality. More from Merriam-Webster on mortality Rhyming Dictionary: Words that rhyme with mortality Spanish Central: Translation of mortality Nglish: Translation of mortality for Spanish Speakers Britannica English: Translation of mortality for Arabic Speakers Britannica.

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