What Does Crude Death Rate Mean?

This means way more fatalities than expected. An overabundance of death.

The simplest way of measuring mortality is to relate the total number of deaths during the period to the total population at the middle of the period.

Crude Death Rate = (Total number of deaths during the period) / (Total population at the middle of the period)

= ∑Dx / ∑Px, where Dx = Number of deaths of persons aged x years last birthday; Px = Number of persons aged x years last birthday (lbd).

Crude Death Rate (CDR) gives the probability that a person chosen randomly from the given population will die during the period from any whatsoever. It is simple to calculate. But the drawback of CDR is that it is really a crude measure of mortality, and does not take into account the age and sex composition of the population. The probability of death is not the same at all ages, and also varies for males and females at the same age. As such, CDR fails to give a true comparison of the mortality conditions of two communities. Even if the mortality rates at all ages are lower for one region than another, CDR for the former may be larger.