How do Minnesota death rates by race/ethnicity compare to national rates for the same age groups?

1. What the official Minnesota data say about race, age, and death

The Minnesota Department of Health distinguishes crude rates (the observed deaths per population) from age‑adjusted rates (which normalize for different age structures when comparing groups), and it calculates race/ethnicity rates as deaths divided by the total population in each group—while warning that crude rates reflect many unmeasured factors and that age‑adjustment is necessary to compare groups of different ages ^[4]. The state maintains annual vital‑statistics summaries that break deaths down by age, race/ethnicity and cause, and death‑certificate data are the primary source for Minnesota analyses referenced in the academic literature ^{[5] [6] [7]}.

2. How Minnesota’s racial pattern compares with national trends

National analyses during the pandemic showed that most non‑white groups—Black, Latino, Indigenous and Pacific Islander populations—had substantially higher age‑adjusted COVID and excess mortality than non‑Hispanic whites, and that Asian Americans nationally often had the lowest age‑adjusted COVID mortality ^[3]. Minnesota fits the broad national story that communities of color experienced disproportionate pandemic mortality, but with a distinctive pattern: Minnesota’s primary divide was between white residents and all other racial groups rather than the national pattern’s finer gradations, meaning Asian and other groups in Minnesota did not mirror their generally lower national mortality profiles ^{[1] [8]}.

3. The striking exception: Asian Minnesotans

Several independent analyses highlighted that Asian Americans in Minnesota saw much higher age‑adjusted COVID mortality than Asian Americans nationally—APM Research Lab found some of the highest state age‑adjusted rates for Asian populations in Minnesota and noted that nationally Asian Americans typically had the lowest age‑adjusted mortality ^[3]. One neighborhood‑level study suggested this divergence may reflect Minnesota’s Asian population composition (a larger share of Southeast Asian groups who face structural disadvantages) and geographic clustering in more disadvantaged neighborhoods, amplifying risk ^{[2] [1]}.

4. Black, Hispanic and Indigenous disparities in Minnesota

Peer‑reviewed and preprint studies using Minnesota death‑certificate data report that Black and Hispanic Minnesotans experienced disproportionate increases in certain causes of death and in pandemic‑period excess mortality relative to 2019 baselines—mirroring national evidence that these groups bore heavier pandemic mortality burdens ^{[7] [9] [10]}. The Minnesota research emphasized the role of neighborhood deprivation and structural factors in producing those disparities, decomposing excess mortality into components attributable to area disadvantage and other residual drivers ^{[1] [2]}.

5. Limits of the available reporting and what remains unanswered

The supplied sources robustly document disparities and discuss age‑adjustment methods, but they do not provide a complete, side‑by‑side matrix of Minnesota versus national death rates broken down by identical age bands for every race/ethnicity; therefore precise numeric comparisons for "the same age groups" cannot be fully stated here from these materials alone ^{[4] [5]}. Researchers relying on Minnesota death certificates and national CDC/APM datasets have produced state‑level age‑adjusted comparisons for major groups (e.g., showing unusually high Asian age‑adjusted rates in Minnesota), but filling every age‑by‑race cell would require accessing the primary tabulated state and national datasets beyond the excerpts supplied ^{[3] [1]}.