John,
The rate is the number of deaths per thousand live births.
So if you take the deaths/births*1000 you get the rate.
So for the gross # we take 4,026,036 births divide by 27,253 deaths multiply by 1000 and get 6.8 (rounded up)
For the rest consider that the rate of death for sub 500 gram babies is 855.1 per thousand! So you can see how counting sub-1,000 babies can skew the stats, even a relative few at an 85% death rate will seriously skew the data.
So in my analysis I deduct the 29,378 births below 1,000 grams and the 12,624 deaths multiply by 1,000 and get the new rate of 3.7 (rounded up).
Births Deaths Rate
Overall 4026036 27253 6.77
< 500 grams 6450 5515 855.04
500 - 749 11081 5283 476.76
750 - 1000 11847 1826 154.13
< 1000 29378 12624 429.71
Total above 1,000 3996658 14629 3.66
As for citations - the data is from the CDC. Too many pundits like Krugman (and Limbaugh) look for stats to prove something, but don't really examine the data.
As for literature addressing the relative quality of data in this area - I haven't seen much - too many people accept foreign data as gospel and don't have a clue on how to rationalize different systems. Carnell has done the best job to date, but its been politicized.
John |
