Quality of death counts and adult mortality registration in Suriname and its main regions

Qualidade dos registros de óbitos e estimativas de mortalidade adulta no Suriname e regiões

Calidad de los recuentos de registros de muerte y mortadlidad adulta en Surinam y sus principales regiones

Abstract

Suriname statistical office assumes that mortality data in the country is of good quality and does not perform any test before producing life table estimates. However, lack of data quality is a concern in the less developed areas of the world. The primary objective of this article is to evaluate the quality of death counts registration in the country and its main regions from 2004 to 2012 and to produce estimates of adult mortality by sex. We use data from population, by age and sex, from the last censuses and death counts from the Statistical office. We use traditional demographic methods to perform the analysis. We find that the quality of the death count registration in Suriname and its central regions is reasonably good. We also find that population data can be considered good. The results reveal a small difference in the completeness for males and females and that for the sub-national population the choice of method has implication on the results. To sum up, data quality in Suriname is better than in most countries in the region, but there are considerable regional differences as observed in other locations.

Key words
Suriname; Vital records; Data quality; Mortality estimates; Death distribution methods