Censoc: Linked Administrative Mortality Records for Individual-Level Mortality Research

Casey F. Breen, University of Calfornia, Berkeley
Joshua Goldstein, University of California, Berkeley
Maria Osborne, University of California Berkeley

In the United States, much progress into the determinants of longevity has been made using survey data and aggregated tabulations. However, the lack of rich, large-scale, individual-level data has proven to be a barrier to further progress. We introduce the CenSoc datasets, which link the full-count 1940 Census to Social Security Mortality Records. The unprecedented size and richness of CenSoc allows investigators to make new discoveries into geographic, racial, and class-based disparities in mortality in the United States. We discuss the technical steps taken to construct these datasets, validate them using external aggregate data on mortality, and discuss best practices for using these data. The CenSoc datasets are publicly available, and we anticipate these data will facilitate new avenues of research into the determinants of mortality disparities in the United States.

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 Presented in Session 94. New Linked Data Sources