Dissertation

Spatial and temporal consistency of cause-specific mortality data

Abstract

Mortality analysis by causes of death is one of the key areas of demographic research. However, the relevance and usefulness of such analysis strongly depend on the validity, reliability, and usability of the collected data. This thesis extends the traditional approach to studying the issue of cause-of-death data quality by examining the consistency of the data collected by a given country. Two dimensions are addressed: spatial consistency, or the consistency of the data across the country’s subnational entities; and temporal consistency, or the consistency of cause-of-death data over time.