What does death rate?

Answer 1

The crude Death Rate (CBR) is the number of people who die in a year as a proportion of the total population, usually expressed as deaths per thousand people (though it can also be given as a percentage). So 2.5 million US deaths out of a population of 310 million or so gives a crude Death Rate of 8 per thousand or 0.8%. There are other forms of Death Rate, such as age-specific rates, but the CBR is the one most commonly used. Over the last couple of centuries the major factor in falling death rates has been declining Infant Mortality Rate (deaths in the first year of life per thousand live births): globally this has fallen from perhaps a quarter to below 5%. Note that a lower death rate doesn't necessarily mean a healthier society: it can nowadays also mean more children, so crude death rates in richer countries will paradoxically rise in coming decades even though we're living longer, because people generally are having fewer children than a few decades ago.