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Mortality Rate

Definition

The mortality rate is the measure of the number of deaths in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time.

Analogy

Think about it like this - if you have a garden with 100 flowers and 10 die every month, your 'flower mortality rate' would be 10%. It's just like keeping track of how many flowers you lose over time, but instead we're talking about people in a specific area.

Related terms

Infant Mortality Rate: This refers to the number of deaths under one year of age occurring among live births in a given geographical area during a given year, per 1,000 live births occurring among the population of the given geographical area during the same year.

Crude Death Rate: This is the total number of deaths to residents in a specified geographic area (country, state, county, etc.) divided by the total population for the same geographic area (for a specified time period, usually a calendar year) and multiplied by 100,000

Life Expectancy: This is an estimate on average how long individuals are expected to live based on current death rates.