How to Calculate ASDR

You may recall that last week, we encountered the odd phenomena that even though the
crude death rate of blacks was lower than that of whites, we saw that black age-specific
death rates were higher than those of whites at every age. In 1995, for example, the crude
death rates for whites was higher than that of blacks, 9.1 versus 8.9. We can also see
some counterintuitive results when we compared across countries. For example, Mexico
had a lower crude death rate than the United States.
Why is this? Essentially because the crude death rate is sensitive to the age distribution of
the population for which it is being calculated. If the age-specific death rates of two
populations are the same, the population with a higher proportion in later adulthood will
still have a higher crude death rate, since it has more people in the age groups where
mortality is high.
Clearly, if we want to compare populations in a meaningful fashion, we can't rely on the
crude death rate. We could use age-specific death rates, but they become unwieldy. Every
time we compare two countries, we don't want to have to go through the hassle of looking
at entire lists of death rates.
That's why we often make use of a measure called the age-standardized crude death rate.
It is an adjusted value of the crude death rate that removes the effects of age distribution
when we are comparing two populations.
The basic point of age standardization, that is the calculation of age-standardized crude
death rates (ASCDR), is to allow for comparisons of death rates between populations that
are not affected by differences in the age distributions of the populations. Crude death
rates by themselves are affected by the age distribution of the population: all things being
equal, younger populations will have lower crude death rates since they have more people
at younger ages where death rates are low, and older populations will have higher death
rates since they have more people at higher ages where death rates are high. Normally
when we want to compare populations, we don't want the age distribution of the
population to have an effect.
First of all, I'll put up some formulas that describe age standardization, and I'll work an
example.
Imagine that you have two populations, say population 1 and population 2. Each
population has a set of age-specific death rates, ASDR1(a) and ASDR2(a). These describe
the age-specific death rate at each age a. Each population has an age distribution, POP1(a)
and POP2(a) which identify the number of people at each age a.
If you think about it, the crude death rates of each of the populations should be given by
the following:

Here CDR1 is what we say SDR for country A, POP1(a)=w(i)

Here CDR2 is what we say SDR for Country B

The logic behind this is that multiplying the age-specific death rate in each age group by
the number of people in that age group gives you the number of deaths in that age group.
Summing deaths across age groups gives you the total number of deaths in the
population. Dividing by the sum of the number of people in each age group and
multiplying by 1000 gives you the crude death rate.
Looking at these equations should also give you some sense of why the age distribution
matters. In a sense, the crude death rate is the weighted average of the death rates in each
age group, with the weights given by the number of people in each age group, that is
POP1(a) and POP2(a). When you calculate a CDR for a population with a lot of young
people, therefore, it is as if you are giving more importance in the average to the low
death rates of young people.
Looking at these equations you may also get some sense of how standardization should
work. Basically, if we wanted to compare death rates in populations 1 and 2, without
worrying about the effects of differences in the age distribution of the two populations,
we could use the information we have to calculate the CDR that would appear in
population 2 if it had the same age distribution as population 1, that is, if its age
distribution was given by POP1(a) instead of POP2(a). This new CDR, called the ASCDR
or age-adjusted crude death rate for population 2, would be given by the following
formula:

This is the standardized SDR of Country B. , POP1(a)=w(i)

This, as you can see, is the crude death rate that would appear in population 2 if it had the
age distribution of population 1.