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Title: Indirect estimation of adult mortality from orphanhood
Citation Type: Book, Section
Publication Year: 2013
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Abstract: Orphanhood methods estimate the mortality of adult women and men indirectly from data on the survival status of respondents’ mothers and fathers respectively. In order to apply the method, at least one census or single-round survey of the population must have included the questions ‘Is your mother alive?’ and ‘Is your father alive?’. Mortality can be estimated from the answers to these questions without requiring respondents to recall the dates when deaths occurred or the ages at death of deceased individuals. Since respondents’ mothers must have been alive when the respondents were born, the duration over which they have been exposed to the risk of dying equals the age of the respondents. By allowing for the mean age at which the mothers gave birth in the population concerned, it is possible to predict life table survivorship from age 25 to age 25 plus a rounded number of years (n) based on the age group of the respondents (l25+n/l25) from the proportion of respondents in each age group whose mother is alive. Similarly, by adjusting for the mean age at which the fathers have children, one can predict life table survivorship of adult men from the proportions of respondents with living fathers. As men tend to be older than their wives and other partners, their survivorship is measured between a base age of 35 and age 35 +n where n is again linked to the age group of the respondents. If mortality has changed over time, the estimated survivorship ratios reflect the mortality rates that have prevailed at a range of ages and dates. A ‘time location’ method has been developed that estimates how many years prior to inquiry each cohort survivorship ratio equalled the period survivorship ratio. These intervals increase with the age of respondents, ranging between about 4 and 14 years before the collection of the data. Thus, if the survivorship ratios estimated from the reports of different age groups of respondent are translated into a common index of mortality in adulthood (such as 45q15) using a 1-parameter system of model life tables, these statistics will refer to different dates and can be used to infer the broad trend in mortality over time. One advantage that orphanhood methods have over questions about household deaths is that only censuses or unusually large surveys can capture information on enough deaths in households in the year before the inquiry to yield mortality estimates that are sufficiently precise to be useful. The orphanhood method can be used in much smaller inquiries, although all methods for the estimation of adult mortality require data on thousands of households. Moreover, the method does not assume that the population is closed to migration. However, the results from the method will not be representative for small states or sub-national areas in which a substantial proportion of the population are in-migrants or have emigrated.
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Authors: Timæus, Ian, M
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Pages: 222-243
Volume Title: Tools for Demographic Estimation
Publisher: UNFPA
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Data Collections: IPUMS International
Topics: Other
Countries: Kenya