A method for estimating sub-national mortality rates by using incomplete civil registration to correct census data on recent deaths

Rob Dorrington, University of Cape Town
Ian M. Timaeus, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)

It is notoriously difficult to estimate life tables which represent sub-national regions in developing countries. Death registration is usually incomplete and Death Distribution methods for estimating the completeness of the statistics often perform poorly at a sub-national level. On the other hand, census questions about recent deaths in the household are prone to unpredictable age-specific patterns of under- and over-reporting. This paper proposes a method of combining the two sources of data that makes use of the respective strengths of each to produce reliable estimates of sub-national mortality. It demonstrates the method by applying it to the estimation of provincial mortality in South Africa in 2001, 2006 and 2011 combining data on registered deaths, with those from two censuses and a large community survey.