What is proportionate mortality?

• A. The percent of deaths attributable to a specific cause
• B. A rate of death due to a specific cause
• C. The proportion of the population dying from a specific cause
• D. Case fatality rate for a disease

Answer: (A)

Proportionate mortality describes how the deaths in a population are distributed across causes during a specific time period. It is the share of all deaths that are due to a particular cause, expressed as a percent. It is calculated by dividing the number of deaths from that cause by the total number of deaths from all causes, then multiplying by 100.

This is different from a rate, which would measure deaths from a specific cause per a defined population size (for example, per 100,000 people). It also isn’t the risk that an individual in the population will die from that cause, since it doesn’t use the population at risk in the denominator. Nor is it the case fatality rate, which is the proportion of people with a given disease who die from it.

So, the correct concept is the percent of deaths attributable to a specific cause. For example, if there are 1,000 total deaths in a year and 200 are due to heart disease, the proportionate mortality for heart disease is 20%.