Breathing new life into death certificates: Extracting handwritten cause of death in the LIFE-M project

Keywords

Death certificate, Semi-automated classification, Cause of death

Abstract

The demographic and epidemiological transitions of the past 200 years are well documented at an aggregate level. Understanding differences in individual and group risks for mortality during these transitions requires linkage between demographic data and detailed individual cause of death information. This paper describes the digitization of almost 185,000 causes of death for Ohio to supplement demographic information in the Longitudinal, Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-database (LIFE-M). To extract causes of death, our methodology combines handwriting recognition, extensive data cleaning algorithms, and the semi-automated classification of causes of death into International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes. Our procedures are adaptable to other collections of handwritten data, which require both handwriting recognition and semi-automated coding of the information extracted.

Original Publication Citation

"Bailey, Martha; Susan Leonard; Joseph Price; Evan Roberts; Logan Spector; and Mengying Zhang. “Breathing New Life into Death Certificates: Extracting Handwritten Cause of Death in the LIFE- M Project.” Explorations in Economic History, 87, 1-10, 2023"

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2023

Publisher

Elsevier Inc.

Language

English

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Economics

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

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