The CenSoc project is a five-year project funded by the National Institute on Aging R01AG058940, with Joshua R. Goldstein, Principal Investigator.

The CenSoc project – so named because it links 1940 Census data with Social Security Administration death records – is a new, large-scale, public microdata data set to be used for advancing understanding of mortality disparities in the United States. The project uses record linkage techniques to match deaths aged 65-and-over observed from 1975 to 2005 back to individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics in the census. The use of modern data-linkage techniques allows us to construct datasets of about 4.7-7 million records, several times the size of the largest existing sample surveys. We also publish the Berkeley Unified Numident Mortality Database (BUNMD), a standalone file containing over 49 million records death records, and World War II era Army enlistment records. The unprecedented scale and detail of CenSoc data allow researchers to make new discoveries in areas such as (a) mortality disparities by education, national origin, and race; (b) early life conditions and later-life mortality; and (c) geographic variation and the neighborhood determinants of mortality. These topics are of increasing importance in understanding increases in disparities in life expectancy in the United States.

CenSoc has three core purposes:

1. Creation and Dissemination of Linked Mortality Data Sets, that is, public, individual-level data sets linking the 1940 U.S. Census with the (a) Social Security Death Master File, and (b) the NARA Numident file.
2. Development of New Mortality Rate Estimation Methods for Linked Data.
3. Production of ’High Resolution’ Studies of Mortality Disparities and Longevity Determinants. See the research page for accomplishments.