Age adjustment using the 2000 projected U.S. population.

Abstract

Age adjustment, using the direct method, is the application of observed age-specific rates to a standard age distribution to eliminate differences in crude rates in populations of interest that result from differences in the populations’ age distributions. This adjustment is usually done when comparing two or more populations at one point in time or one population at two or more points in time. Age adjustment is particularly relevant when populations being compared have different age structures, for example, the U.S. white and Hispanic populations. The classic literature on age adjusting, as well as more recent National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) publications, has focused on adjusting death rates and provides comprehensive discussions of age-adjustment techniques. However, age adjustment can be applied to any population-based event. This report describes several sets of age-adjustment weights, based on the year 2000 projected U.S. population, that were used to generate age-adjusted baseline data for a number of Healthy People 2010 objectives. This work builds on the foundation set by the Department of Health