Problems of the quality of cause-specific mortality statistics at old ages

Abstract

This paper briefly analyzes the quality of cause-specific mortality statistics at old ages in Russia. Two aspects were the focus of the work: the regional differences in approaches for choosing the underlying cause of death and the comparison of the Russian coding practice with the practices of several other European countries. The results of the study indicate that there are certain problems with the quality of cause-of-death coding at old ages in Russia. No unified approach to coding deaths caused by senility is used at the subnational level, which leads to the distortion of the regional cause-specific mortality structures. Furthermore, for many groups of causes Russian death rates are much lower than those in European countries. This peculiarity is caused by the specificity of the Russian cause-of-death coding practice, which results in underestimating the mortality from certain causes at old ages.