Objective-Linking data is a powerful mechanism to provide policy-relevant information. The National Center for Health Statistics' Data Linkage Program produces linked mortality files (LMFs) for research by linking data from the National Center for Health Statistics' surveys, including the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), to mortality data from the National Death Index. Assessing the accuracy of the linked data is an important step in ensuring its analytic use. This report compares the cumulative survival probabilities estimated with the 2006-2018 NHIS LMFs to those from the annual U.S. life tables.
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