Premature Death in the New Independent States (1997) / Chapter Skim
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Issues of Data Quality in Assessing Mortality Trends and Levels in the New Independent States
Issues of Data Quality in Assessing Mortality Trends and Levels in the New Independent States
Pages 120-155
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From page 120... ...
We examine data from selected regions and dates, while drawing the reader's attention to broader issues and the existing literature on the quality of data from the former Soviet Union. Our focus is on the traditionally Moslem NIS countries, including the Central Asian states of Kyrgyz, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, plus Kazakstan and Azerbaijan, which are linked both historically and culturally to Central Asia; these are cases in which real levels and trends in mortality, both past and present, are obscured by data error.
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From page 121... ...
While we agree that the available data provide a fairly clear picture of the main problems in public health and welfare for some regions and purposes, issues of data quality are too substantial to ignore. Acceptance of reported mortality data at face value would lead to errors in evaluating the impact of intervention strategies, because changes in data quality can obscure changes in real demographic behavior or outcomes.
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From page 122... ...
A similar pattern occurs in later censuses.3 It is also not possible that the proportion of children who were physically or mentally handicapped was more than 10 times greater in the relatively developed Baltic republics than in the relatively undeveloped Central Asian republics (Anderson et al., 1987~. Similarly, there is an obvious deficiency in the reported data showing that the month in which the lowest number of infant deaths occurred in the Soviet Union was December, while the month in which the highest number of infant deaths occurred was January (Anderson and Silver, 1988)
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From page 123... ...
Next is a section examining how the identified data quality problems apply to the Central Asian data, thereby limiting their utility in policy and intervention terms. The final section presents conclusions and recommendations for improving the collection of mortality data in the NIS.
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From page 124... ...
Use of the reported infant mortality rate would be very misleading; adjusted or corrected infant mortality rates cannot yet be applied consistently for all the countries because of a lack of detailed data. Construction of Life Tables As the new states have to deal with the collection, reworking, and analysis of population data, not only are there problems related to maintaining and improving the data collection system, but there are also questions about the consistency over time of the methods used to create summary statistics, including life tables.
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From page 125... ...
In constructing life tables, Goskomstat used a Gompertz-Makeham function to estimate mortality rates above certain ages, in lieu of using the reported agespecific mortality data. A Gompertz-Makeham formula is commonly applied to smooth mortality rates at very old ages.
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From page 126... ...
We have found evidence of severe age heaping in the 1990 Census of China for Uighurs and Kazaks, traditionally Moslem peoples who speak a Turkic language and are closely related to Moslem nationalities in former Soviet Central Asia (Anderson and Silver, 1994c)
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From page 127... ...
An increasing body of research has documented situations in which a mortality crossover or surprisingly low reported mortality rates at older ages could not possibly represent the actual risks of dying (Condran et al., 1991; Dechter and Preston, 1991~. It has been suggested that urban-rural mortality crossovers indicate deficiencies in mortality data from the Soviet Union (Anderson and Silver, 1989a; Dmitrieva and Andreev, 1987~.
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From page 128... ...
The strange rise and fall of infant mortality rates in the Soviet Union during the 1970s shows strong evidence of the effects of both increasingly complete reporting of births and infant deaths and some deliberate falsification of data in the locales to mask the true infant mortality rates (Anderson and Silver, 1986b, 1994b; Ksenofontova, 1994~. Also, the error in the reported rates occurred predominantly in rural areas and in the more rural republics of the former Soviet Union Central Asia, Kazakstan, and Moldova.
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From page 129... ...
Approach to Data Analysis As noted in the introduction, given the substantial problems with infant mortality data and with mortality data for advanced ages (see also Anderson and Silver, 1986b, 1989a, 1994b) , this chapter concentrates on ages at which the data are generally relatively reliable.
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From page 130... ...
Data for other regions of the NIS, especially for Central Asia, Kazakstan, and Azerbaijan, are more problematic.~5 Our discussion of Russia and Latvia is followed by an examination of the mortality situation in the four Central Asian states (Kyrgyz, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) , plus Azerbaijan and Kazakstan.
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From page 131... ...
We use Coale-Demeny West model life tables for this purpose. With every age-specific mortality rate from a population of interest, we associate the expectation of life at birth from the Coale-Demeny West model life table that has the same age-specific mortality rate.
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From page 132... ...
for Russia in 1978-1979, 1990, and 1992, females. Of data quality.
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From page 134... ...
However, not only were the gains among Russian males from the late 1970s through 1990 lost between 1990 and 1992, but real mortality among older working-age Russian men in 1992 was higher than in the late 1970s. Figures 4-3a and b show the implied expectation of life at birth from agespecific mortality rates for residents of Russia and Latvia on the one hand, and ethnic Russians and ethnic Latvians in the Soviet Union as a whole on the other hand.
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From page 136... ...
AGE-SPECIFIC MORTALITY RATES IN THE TRADITIONALLY MOSLEM NIS COUNTRIES Many problems with mortality data from less-developed countries are found in the data for the traditionally Moslem NIS countries. As discussed earlier, all of these problems result in reported mortality rates lower than the actual rates.
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From page 137... ...
However, the very low mortality rates that are implied at older ages for Uighurs as compared with Swedes are clearly implausible given the known public health conditions in Xinjiang as compared with Sweden. Thus those low rates suggest poor data quality (see Coale and Li, 1991; Anderson and Silver, 1994c)
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From page 138... ...
, patterns of implausible mortality rates at older ages similar to those in the former Soviet Central Asian republics appear in the Uighur population of Xinjiang (Anderson and Silver, 1994c)
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From page 139... ...
for rural population of Latvia, Russia, and Uzbekistan in 1990, males.
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From page 140... ...
for urban population of Latvia, Russia, and Uzbekistan in 1990, females. Implied e(O)
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From page 141... ...
for total population of six Moslem republics in 1990, males. 80.0 78.0 76.0 74.0 72.0 70.0 68.0 66.0 Implied e(O)
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From page 142... ...
Men of European background may consume more alcohol than men from indigenous ethnic groups in Central Asia; thus the indigenous men may have lower mortality from causes directly related to alcohol consumption. However, the magnitude of implied life expectancy for older men from some of the Central Asian republics is so high and so inconsistent with agespecific mortality rates at younger ages as to be out of the range of relationships of mortality at different ages in any well-recorded populations.
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From page 143... ...
143 1 oo Cq a' o C)
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From page 144... ...
But because of poor data quality, interventions to improve health conditions that would also improve data quality would be likely to produce equivocal results. For example, efforts to reduce infant mortality rates in Central Asia could also produce more complete reporting of infant deaths.
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From page 145... ...
What other goals are also worthy of attention, and what are the costs and benefits of pursuing these alternatives? Addressing Data Quality in the Traditionally Moslem NIS Countries Former Soviet Central Asia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakstan are regions in which high mortality rates ought to be of concern.
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From page 146... ...
However, it is virtually impossible to describe a trend in mortality in that region with any confidence since mortality levels were certainly grossly underestimated in the past. If one needed to make a best guess for a life table to assign to a Central Asian population, picking one consistent with the reported age-specific mortality rates of women, such as women in their yes, would probably be the best strategy.
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From page 147... ...
, and officials in China's statistics office have shown interest in this line of research for Xinjiang and other provinces, such as Guangxi and Yunnan. Release of the microdata from the 1989 Soviet census for scientific and policy analysis would be a great help in locating more precisely the sources of problems with data from the traditionally Moslem NIS countries.
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From page 148... ...
Improvement in vital registration data and census data collection requires technical expertise and a substantial commitment of state resources. For many of the NIS countries, issues of data collection and population registration are highly politicized.
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From page 149... ...
:191-214. 1986b Infant mortality in the Soviet Union: Regional differences and measurement issues.
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From page 150... ...
Demeny, and B Vaughan 1983 Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations, Second edition.
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From page 151... ...
Guo 1989 Revised regional model life tables at very low levels of mortality. Population Index 55 (Winter)
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From page 152... ...
Ksenofontova, N.Iu. 1990 Nekotorye tendentsii mladencheskoi smertnosti v poslednee desiatiletie [Some trends in infant mortality in the last decade]
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From page 153... ...
Miller 1995 Trends and differentials in infant mortality in the former Soviet Union: How much is due to misreporting? Population Studies 49 (July)
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From page 154... ...
. In that paper, we speculated that in the Central Asian states, reported infant mortality rates would fall, because of an increase in the proportion of infant deaths not being recorded.
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From page 155... ...
14. For Estonia, infant mortality rates and life tables by county for the Soviet period and the early 1990s have just been published (Katus, 1994a, 1994b)
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