Youth Mortality Rates

State Takeaways

Across California, Black and Native youth had the highest mortality rates in 2019. Both black and native youth are twice as likely to die between ages 1-24 compared to white youth.

Sources:

1. “Teen Suicide Prevention.” Center for Native American Youth, 2022.
2. “Does socioeconomic status account for racial and ethnic disparities in childhood cancer survival?” Kehm et al, 2018. Cancer.
3.  “Premature Deaths of Young Black Males in the United States.” Jones-Eversley et al, 2020. Journal of Black Studies.

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Related Resources

Accidental Poisoning Deaths Exceed Homicides of U.S. Young Adults. (2016). Population Reference Bureau. Jarosz, B., & VanOrman, A.

Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States. (2017). Pediatrics. Fowler, K. A., et al.

The Youth mortality rate shows the per-capita death rate for boys and young men in California from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Underlying Cause of Death data accessed from the WONDER database. This database aggregates all deaths from death certificates submitted to the CDC. Data are presented as a crude-death rate calculated by taking the total number of deaths by a specific population and multiplying it by 100,000 to standardize the data.

This indicator uses the bridged-race dataset, which imputes people identifying with more than one race into a single-race category (for more details, see CDC race and ethnicity notes). Latinos are of any race. For cases where Latino origin was not stated in a death certificate, ethnicity is coded as “not stated” in the original data. These cases may thus be missing from individual categories, but they are counted in the ‘all’ category. 

Cases with less than 20 people are not reported due to statistical unreliability. For more details, see the CDC’s data documentation. 

Please see here for additional notes on the BMoC Dashboard and its methodology.