This data collection includes information about the cause of all recorded deaths occurring in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa during 1997. Data are provided concerning underlying causes of death, multiple conditions that caused the death, place of death, residence of the deceased (e.g., region, division, state, county), whether an autopsy was performed, and the month and day of the week of the death. In addition, data are supplied on the sex, race, age, marital status, education, usual occupation, and origin or descent of the deceased. Mortality Detail data for 1997 also can be extracted from this file. The Mortality Detail records are contained in the first 159 positions of these Multiple Cause records. The multiple cause of death fields were coded from the MANUAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES, INJURIES, AND CAUSE-OF-DEATH, NINTH REVISION (ICD-9), VOLUMES 1 AND 2.

Effective with 1997 data, American Samoa records are included in the Territories' Public-Use File (Part 2).The geographic codes were changed effective with the 1996 data to reflect the results of the 1990 Census.Per agreement with NCHS, ICPSR distributes the data files and text of the technical documentation for this collection as prepared by NCHS.The codebook, frequencies, record layout, appendices, and geographical code outlines are provided as Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: United States DS2: Combined Territories DS3: American Samoa DS4: Guam DS5: Puerto Rico DS6: Virgin Islands

All recorded deaths occurring in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam during 1997.