Forecasting age-related changes in breast cancer mortality among white and black US women

The disparity in breast cancer mortality rates among white and black US women is widening, with higher mortality rates among black women. We apply functional time series models on age-specific breast cancer mortality rates for each group of women, and forecast their mortality curves using exponential smoothing state-space models with damping. The data were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program of the US. Mortality data were obtained from the National Centre for Health Statistics (NCHS) available on the SEER*Stat …