National Death Index (NDI) is a United States resource available to researchers from the US
National Center for Health Statistics
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is a U.S. government agency that provides statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the public health of the American people. It is a unit of the Centers for Disease Control ...
to obtain death status (regular NDI) or cause of death (NDI Plus) for deaths of citizens occurring within the US.
The fees for routine NDI searches consist of a $350.00 service charge plus $0.15 per user record for each year of death searched. For example, 1,000 records searched against 10 years would cost $350 + ($0.15 x 1,000 x 10) or $1,850. Fees for the NDI Plus service are slightly higher ($0.21) per record.
NDI is similar to
Social Security
Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance ...
Death Master File
The Death Master File (DMF) is a computer database file made available by the United States Social Security Administration since 1980. It is known commercially as the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). The file contains information about person ...
in terms of providing death status and date of death. However, NDI Plus service offers further information on cause of death.
The index was initially approved during
Dorothy P. Rice's tenure as director.
In 2011, the National Death Index was linked to the
General Social Survey
The General Social Survey (GSS) is a sociological survey created in 1972 by James A. Davis of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and funded by the National Science Foundation. The GSS collects information ...
, allowing for the analysis of societal attitudes and demographics, and their relationship to death.
References
External links
* {{official website
*
About the National Death Index
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention