In the United States, State laws require death certificates to be completed for all deaths, and Federal law mandates national collection and publication of deaths and other vital statistics data.
Material is available to assist persons in completing the death certificate.
NCHS shares the costs incurred by the States in providing vital statistics data for national use. This is one of the few sources of comparable health-related data for small geographic areas and a long time period in the United States. The data are also used to present the characteristics of those dying in the United States, to determine life expectancy, and to compare mortality trends with other countries. Preliminary and final annual data are available. Other mortality-related activities at NCHS include the National Mortality Followback Survey and the National Death Index .