Course description

In recent decades, the quality of mortality data in developing countries has improved significantly. However, even today, studies that seek to produce mortality estimates for the region face many challenges due to problems in the declaration of information and the under-enumeration of death records. The objective of this course is to present the main methods of death distribution, which allow us to correct the level of mortality from an estimate of death register coverage. Each of the five-course days will consist of a theoretical lecture session, a practical application of the method presented in class, and a session for discussions, questions and answers, and presentation of solutions to exercises assigned to participants.

Content

• Mortality data sources and their limitations.
• Review of the theoretical populations.
• Evaluation of the quality of death records in data-limited settings.
• Death distribution methods: Growth balance methods (GGB), Synthetic extinct generations (SEG) methods, and Combined GGB-SEG methods.

Target audience

The course will be useful to Master students, PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and anyone interested in working with mortality information in countries with limited coverage of death records.

Required training or equipment

It is expected that students have some knowledge about life tables and demographic techniques.

Basic knowledge of R is desirable.

Students must bring their own laptop with R programme installed.