Estimating Adult Mortality Levels in Former Soviet Republics of Central Asia

Kirill F. Andreev, United Nations

After breakdown of Soviet Union, quality of vital registration data in former Soviet republics of Central Asia deteriorated rendering directly computed adult mortality levels unreliable. In this work, existing data for deriving adult mortality estimates are evaluated and General Growth Balance method is applied for estimating completeness of death registration in intercensal periods. The method relies on assumption that population is closed for migration but this assumption is grossly violated for these countries as migration was very high during the 1990s. A set of reasonable assumptions about age patterns and levels of migration was developed and incorporated in an extended version of the GGB method to produce a second set of estimates of adult mortality levels. Finally, adult mortality rates were derived from infant and child mortality rates adjusted for underregistration as based on evidence from surveys and compared with those produced by the GGB method.