Seasonality of Deaths in the U.S. by Age and Cause

In this paper, we analyze seasonality of deaths by age and cause in the U.S. using public use files for the years 1994 to 1998 by the methods of regression and a variation of Census Method II. We answer the following questions: For each age cohort, how much does each cause of death contribute to seasonality of deaths? What is the reason for the variation in seasonality of deaths with respect to age? We also analyze death records of Social Security Administration over a longer time period to examine how seasonality of deaths has changed since the mid-1970’s. We found that in general, the degree of seasonality in deaths has decreased over time for younger cohorts and has increased over time for older cohorts.mortality, seasonality