| Sumario: | A study was conducted to establish accurate ages at death for the African-American population at advanced ages. A sample of death certificates of persons aged 65 and over in 1985 was linked to records for the same individuals in U.S. censuses of 1900, 1910, and 1920 and to records of the Social Security Administration. The results reveal that ages at death reported on death certificates are too young on average and that errors are greater for women than for men. Despite systematic underreporting of age at death, too many deaths are registered at ages 95 and over, and this excess represents an age distribution of deaths that declines steeply with age. As a result, the base for upward transfers into an age category is much larger than the base for transfers downward and out. When corrected ages at death are employed to estimate age-specific death rates, however, African-American mortality rates are found to increase substantially above age 85, and the racial “crossover” in mortality disappears.
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