Professor who developed mortality-rate model dies

EUGENE, Ore. – University of Oregon sociology professor Lawrence Carter, who helped develop a model for forecasting mortality rates, has died at age 68.

Carter's family says he died from complications from multiple sclerosis Sunday in Eugene.

In the 1980s, Carter helped develop what is known as the Lee-Carter model. It is used by the Census Bureau and others in predicting demographic trends.

The Register Guard also reports (http://bit.ly/o4y4I7) that as one of the few black professors at the University of Oregon in the early 1970s, Carter helped defuse tensions between the city and the Black Panthers.