Statistic & conclution - Statistics Project Example

From 2007 mortality data, one finds several general trends. Broken down by cause of death, specific mortality rates are given in Table 121 of the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics’ Deaths: Final Data for 2007. In that year, the aggregate for the entire United States in terms of all causes of death is 760.2 per 100,000 (or 0.76%). Numerous states were higher on average, but the highest in terms of total deaths was American Samoa (1,054.4), which is an unincorporated territory of the United States.

West Virginia (951.7), Mississippi (943.0), and Oklahoma (920.4) also have relatively high mortality rates. An explanation for this may be the quality of health care in these states, which in 2007 all ranked among the bottom in a nationwide survey of healthcare quality (Arnst). American Samoa, which has an average of 94.2 out of 100,000, nearly double of the American national average, supports this conclusion to the extent that it lacks much of the modern medical infrastructure belonging to the continental states.

Another statistical point of interest with potential policy implications is the data related to suicide rates relative to states. Nationally, the average is 11.3 per 100,000 people; however, in Alaska, the rate is 22.1 (195%), in New Mexico, the rate is 20.4 (180%), in Wyoming, the rate is 19.7 (174%), and in Montana, the rate is 19.4 (171%). Not coincidentally, in 2010, those states ranked 50th (1.2 inhabitants per square mile), 45th (17.0), 49th (5.8) and 48th (6.8) respectively in population density (U.S. Census Bureau).

The significance of that correlation is that smaller population density seems to be directly correlated with a higher than average suicide rate. Although all states generally and understandably active try to prevent suicide, these figures seem to suggest that suicide is a more prevalent threat to individuals living in relative isolation from one another in Western states. In contrast to some data in the literature that suggests suicide rates are paired with high rates of population density, such as in work put forward by Saunderson and Langford, it may be the case that low population density is positively correlated with suicide.

BibliographyArnst, Catherine. The Sorry States of Health Care. 13 June 2007. 10 September 2011 .Saunderson, Thomas R. and Ian H. Langford. "A study of the geographical distribution of suicide rates in England and Wales 1989-92 using empirical bayes estimates." Social Science & Medicine, 43 (1996): 489-502.U.S. Census Bureau. Resident Population Data. Washington D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010.U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. Deaths: Final Data for 2007. Washington D.C.: National Vital Statistics Reports (NVSR), May 2010.