A method for calculating age-weighted death proportions for comparison purposes

Objective To introduce a method for calculating age-weighted death proporti ons (wDP) for comparison purposes. Materials and Methods A methodological study using secondary data from the municipality of Sao Paulo, Brazil (1980-1994) was carried out. First, death s are weighted in terms of years of potential life lost before the age of 1 00 years. Then, in order to eliminate distortion of comparisons among propo rtions of years of potential life lost before the age of 100 years (PYPLL-1 00), the denominator is set to that of a standard age distribution of death s for all causes. Conventional death proportions (DP), PYPLL-100, and wDP w ere calculated. Results Populations in which deaths from a particular cause occur at older ages exhibit lower wDP than those in which deaths occur at younger ages. Th e sum of all cause-specific wDP equals one only when the test population ha s exactly the same age distribution of deaths for all causes as that of the standard population. Conclusion Age-weighted death proportions improve the information given by conventional DP, and are strongly recommended for comparison purposes.