MORTALITY TRENDS

• Trends in national mortality rates •  

Graphs showing time trends in mortality rates

Mortality vehicle crash mortality among males (top) & females (bottom)

aged 15-29 in the Netherlands and the UK: 1950-2007

Graph comparing UK and Danish motor vehicle crash mortality in young adults

Comment: Motor vehicle crash denotes any injury resulting from a motor vehicle on a public road. Circles represent rates for individual years. In both sexes, the Dutch rate halved between 2003 and 2006.

Method: Mortality rates calculated using data from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Population Division, then standardised for age (by taking unweighted averages of component rates) and smoothed (as weighted 3-year moving averages). For details, see the Info page.

Caution: Trends can reflect not only changes in disease occurrence or treatment, but also changes in how a cause of death is defined or coded. (The same factors can also account for differences in mortality rates between different countries.) Those due to changes in definition or coding are artefacts, and may be indicated here by dotted (or thin) lines. But, many artefactual trends have no such indication.

WHO mortality rates for particular countries, ages and causes of death