6/12/2001 = Start date of this file by Jean Roth, jroth@nber.org. In 1983 and 1984, only 50% of birth certificates were coded for Arizona, California, Delaware, Georgia, and the District of Columbia. See the page numbered (4) at the bottom of the 1983 or 1984 documentation. 2007-09-25 In the Linked Numerator file for 2004 there are four records with a meaningless character in position 835. There are about 186 records in the Denominator file with the symbol in that position. It is not a problem when tabulating in SAS, which reads the character as a rectangle. Nevertheless, we plan to produce a corrected version without the character. 1989 is the year infant death identification numbers were added. See "Changes Beginning with the 1989 Birth Cohort" in the relevant PDF docs. For earlier years, one way to link the data sets is to sort the numerator and denominator files by the birth certificate variables: matchs datayear rectype resstatb censtatebo regnoccb divoccb estatebo bostate cntyoccb regnresb divresb censtatebr estatebr brstate cntyresb cityresb crace crace3 csex dgestat gestat10 dbirwt birwt14 birwt3 dplural omaps fmaps origm mrace dmage mage12 dmeduc meduc6 dmar mplbir origf frace dfage dfeduc disllb outcome dterm mpcb mpcb6 nprevis dtotord totord9 dlivord livord9 pldel birattnd impracem There will be a small number (< 1 record in 1,000) records with match status matchs<3 indicating infant death which are duplicates in all birth certificate variables. Drop them from the numerator and denominator files, either both copies or one copy, then merge on the birth certificate variables. U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth revisions / versions ------------------------------------------------------------ 2003- 2003 revision 1989-2002 1989 revision 1978-1988 HRA-161 Rev 1/78 1968-1977 PHS-796 Rev 1/68 Geographic Code Basis for FIPS codes, Population (These are true for natality data. Same should be true for lbid.) ------------------------------------------------ 1980 Census: 1982-1993 1990 Census: 1994-2002 2000 Census: 2003- 2014-03-12 -- 2005 & 2006 denominator files updated. f_ab_vent6 now starts in column 629 rather than 619. 2009-05-20 -- clingest is actually the same as gestat. 2003-10-01 -- 1995 documentation says that death certificate data is on the denominator file but apparently, it isn't. Death certificate data from the numerator file can be merged to the denominator file using IDNUMBER. 2003-06-06 -- 1997 SAS, Stata, SPSS programs added. 2002-10-18 -- 1995-1997 data added. 2002-10-15 -- 1998 data added. 5/30/2002 -- 1983 and 1984 data added. 9/21/2001 -- Pkzipped version of data added. 9/20/2001 -- 1985 data converted from continuous stream of data to carriage return/ linefeed delimited records. SAS program for 1986-1987 now applies to 1985 also. A note in the 1985 documentation indicates a miscoded denominator record makes 1985 denominator record counts less by 1 9/14/2001 -- SAS programs revised to include value labels