Overview
Elizabeth Arias is a research demographer at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Division of Vital Statistics. She specializes in mortality measurement, life tables, race-ethnic health disparities, and death certificate data quality. She is the lead author of Arias et al. (2008), the definitive NLMS-based evaluation of race and Hispanic-origin misclassification on U.S. death certificates.
Key Contributions
- Arias et al. (2008): Led the NLMS-based validation study establishing classification ratios for all major racial/ethnic groups; documented the AIAN mortality flip from apparent advantage (0.85) to real disadvantage (1.11); validated the Hispanic mortality paradox as not an artifact of misclassification.
- Palloni and Arias (2004): Co-authored with Alberto Palloni; used NLMS data to decompose the Hispanic adult mortality advantage and evaluate salmon-bias (return migration of the ill) and data-quality explanations. Published in Demography 41(3): 385–415.
- Anderson and Arias (2003): Revised all U.S. mortality statistics for 2000 using census-enumerated populations after the 2000 census revealed a 6M+ undercount in 1990-based postcensal estimates; documented large corrections for Hispanic (+14% age-adjusted rate) and American Indian (−18% crude rate) populations.
- Life tables series: Produces the official U.S. life tables published in National Vital Statistics Reports (NCHS), which are used as the authoritative period mortality estimates for Social Security and public health research.
- Rostron, Boies, and Arias (2010): Co-authored evaluation of education reporting on death certificates (Vital and Health Statistics Series 2, No. 151).
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