Gender Differential in Adult Mortality in India: An Assessment Accounting for Death Registration Completeness

Avishek Hazra, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Subrata Lahiri, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

In many developing countries including India deaths are under-registered by a significant margin, which in turn may lead to biased estimates of mortality level. Utilizing SRS and Census data of India, this paper assesses death registration completeness using Preston-Lahiri technique for India for 1971-1999. Two states with high migration level have also been considered to examine the effect of migration in estimating death registration completeness. Adjusting observed age-specific death rates due to death registration completeness, life expectancy at age five (e5) have been calculated for both male and female to depict gender differential in adult mortality. Results indicate that the adopted method is less sensitive to migration. The e5 values estimated through recorded death rates are quite high compared to e5 values estimated through completeness adjusted age-specific death rates. Thus, the paper suggests for considering death registration completeness while estimating gender differential in adult mortality situation of any area.