death rate

noun

plural death rates

: the ratio between deaths and individuals in a specified population during a particular time period : the incidence of deaths in a given population during a defined time period (such as one year) that is typically expressed per 1000 or 100,000 individuals : mortality rate

an annual death rate of 15 deaths per 1000 people

Note: A crude death rate does not distinguish between specific causes of death or groups of individuals and measures the incidence of all deaths in a population during a given time period. More specific death rates are based on narrower categories of individuals or causes of death.

an infant death rate of 9 deaths per 1000 live births

Ebola is infamous for being highly contagious and causing death rates as high as 90 percent in some human outbreaks.

—Brendan Borrell

Examples of death rate in a Sentence

There was a decline in the country's death rate after its health care improved.

Lung cancer death rates are up.

The death rate from accidents is rising.

Recent Examples on the Web

Email address: The study concluded that maternal death rates put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been substantially inflated by misclassified data. —Robin Fields, ProPublica, 5 Apr. 2024

International migration, birth rates and death rates also affect a state's population growth. —USA TODAY, 24 Mar. 2024

The flattening of drug death rates could provide a rare glimmer of hope amid the bleak U.S. drug crisis, which has seen overdose rates rise inexorably for the past two decades and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. —Lev Facher Reprints, STAT, 21 Mar. 2024

Meanwhile, the 10 states with the highest gun death rates (Mississippi and Louisiana rank first and second) all are dominated by Republicans, except No. 7 New Mexico, at 22.7 gun deaths per 100,000. —Thomas Elias, The Mercury News, 16 Mar. 2024

Tri-colored bats saw the greatest death rate in that time frame, dropping from a population of 1,163 to only about 100. —Karl Schneider, The Indianapolis Star, 1 Mar. 2024

The death rate was also greater in the COVID groups. —Claire Bugos, Verywell Health, 27 Feb. 2024

Instead, the opioid death rate here is roughly one-twentieth the rate in the United States. —Lev Facher, STAT, 26 Mar. 2024

The overall drug overdose death rate rose from 2021 to 2022, but the increase was so small it was not considered statistically significant. —CBS News, 22 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1849, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

death rate

noun

: the proportion of deaths in a population that is often expressed as the number of individuals that die in a year per thousand individuals in the population at the beginning of the year

Medical Definition

death rate

noun

: the ratio between deaths and individuals in a specified population and time period : the incidence of deaths in a given population during a defined time period (as one year) that is typically expressed per 1000 or 100,000 individuals : mortality rate

an annual death rate of 715 deaths per 100,000 individuals

Note: A crude death rate does not distinguish between specific causes of death or groups of individuals and measures the incidence of all deaths in a population during a given time period. More specific death rates are based on narrower categories of individuals or causes of death.

an infant death rate of 9 deaths per 1000 live births

The pravastatin group had a 24% lower death rate than the placebo group.

—Harvard Health Letter

Ebola is infamous for being highly contagious and causing death rates as high as 90 percent in some human outbreaks.

—Brendan Borrell, Scientific American