Table 3-1 presents several estimates of completeness of death registration for the nation as a whole by various periods and methods of derivation. Results from the Dual Record System Project showed slight improvement in the early 1970s and indicated a national level of death recording of permanent residents in sample registration areas at about 70 per cent and a regional level ranging from around 40 to 90 per cent during the period 1971-73 (Mijares, 1977:34, Table 4). When actual rates of registered deaths were compared with estimated or projected NCSO rates, it was discovered that there were substantial differentials by region in 1980 and 1981 (Morada, 1985) and by province in 1979 (Vijayakumari, 1985). Even in areas where relatively good registration is expected owing to economic development, 11 to 33 per cent underregistration of deaths was disclosed by studies by the Department of Health (DOH) in 1956 and 1961, on the basis of examination of graves and individual interviews with relatives of the deceased, (cited by Madigan, 1965:310).2
Application of various indirect techniques of assessing the level of death registration yields unclear trends. The lack of trend may either be real, with the rise and fall over time, a reflection of civil security conditions; or distorted because of the differences in the approaches employed. The methods utilized by Concepcion and Cabigon (1984), Flieger et al. (1981) and UN (1982b) specifically exclude the youngest ages 0-4; and there is likely to be more underregistration or underenumcration at the youngest ages.
The estimates of Jaramillo (1941) about 45 years ago show the highest completeness of any year, probably because of the rigid implementation of the vital registration system by the colonial government of the Americans who were then occupying the country, and/or because of the assumptions of the method applied. In fact, the 1939 census was believed to be the most complete of all censuses undertaken in the country from 1903 to 1970 because of almost perfect peace and order in all areas, and because the enumeration, which took place in January, avoided the typhoon season when travel and communication are most difficult (Mijares and Nazareth, 1978:339, citing also relevant work of Hawley, 1954:11). The same reasoning may apply to the high level of death registration in 1938 allowing for the possibility of seasonal effects.
The estimate of the Bureau of Census and Statistics for 1963 of around 70 per cent is more or less equal to the 1971 level obtained with the Dual Record System. It is also much higher than Flieger et al.’s 1960 estimate of about 53 per cent.
2Another secondary source citing the same DOH studies gave 1958 instead of 1956 and different levels of death registration (Mijares and Nazareth, 1978:347).
Estimates yielded by the Brass growth balance method (Brass, 1975) utilized by Flieger et al. (1981) and by the Preston and Coale method (Preston et al., 1980) used by the United Nations (1982b) for the same year of 1970 are highly inconsistent thus casting doubts as to which of the two methods yields the more plausible values. It has been contended that the Preston and Coale method is more robust to departures from stability than the Brass method (Preston et al., 1980; UN, 1983; Preston, 1984; Gray, 1986). Since the 1960s the Philippines has experienced fertility decline (Cabigon, 1980, 1984a, 1985a, 1988; Concepcion, 1980; Morada et al., 1984) and slackening mortality decline as mentioned earlier, implying that the stability assumed in both methods may not have been fulfilled. For this reason, the Preston and Coale method may have yielded a better estimate than the Brass method. This line of reasoning was followed by Concepcion and Cabigon (1984) in establishing the trend in the level of completeness of death registration as previously cited. However, a comparative analysis of some of the emerging techniques of estimating the level of death registration using the same set of data at various points of time is undoubtedly a better strategy than simply taking one of them applied to a particular data set. This is even more important when 13 regions and 73 provinces are dealt with over time. Chapter 2 has already shown substantial interprovincial variations in socioeconomic and health conditions. Given such large variations, one indirect technique of estimating the completeness of death registration may not be a reasonable approach as it is only robust when its underlying assumptions are not strongly violated. Certainly, some of the provinces, especially those greatly affected by internal migration, do not satisfy the closed stable population assumption of some of these techniques. It is then necessary to assess which of the emerging techniques best suits a given province and then take that technique to measure its level of death registration coverage.
Table 3-1: Estimates of death registration completeness by sex for various periods and source:Philippines
Period/Source
Male
Sex
Female Both Sexes
Dual record system
1973, Mijares (1977) - - 77.1 1971, Mijares (1977) - - 70.5 Indirectly estimated 1980, Concepcion and 77.6 73.1 75.4 Cabi g o n (1984) 1975, Flieger etal.(1981) 77.4 78.8 78.1 1970, Flieger etal.(1981) 62.8 53.3 SL 58.2 1970, United Nations (1982b) 75.0 71.0 73.0 1960, Flieger et al.(1981) 52.2 53.3 a 52.7
1963, National Census and
Statistics Office - - 70.0
1938, Jaramillo (1941) 86.0 87.0
a 86.5 a
Assuming sex ratio at birth of 105.
Most of the indirect techniques of evaluating the completeness of death registration apply to single point-of-time data, but this is not a major drawback. In fact, their wide application in many developing countries is clear evidence of their robustness. Moreover, Gray’s (1986:426-431) comparative analysis of results from data in ten countries: Barbados, Chile, Cuba, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Paraguay, Sabah, Sri Lanka and Thailand obtained by using Brass’s sectional growth balance technique, Preston and Hill’s technique (1980), Preston and Coale’s technique, Courbage and Fargues’s technique (1979) and Bourgeois- Pichat’s technique as described by Preston (1984) and cited by Gray (1986) and Conde et al. (1980), has shown that in certain populations where the assumptions are not strongly violated, these techniques are fairly robust Gray (1986) also empirically demonstrated that Preston and Coale’s method is considerably and uniformly more robust than the rest, with the possible exception of Courbage and Fargues’s procedure (which does not assume a closed stable population, so the test of robustness to stability assumption is irrelevant), and that a new procedure proposed by Gray is generally at least equivalent or often more robust than the Preston and Coale’s approach.
3.1.3. Specific objectives of this chapter
In the light of the above, this chapter performs the same type of comparative analysis as done by Gray (1986) but using Philippine data. The method of estimating the level of completeness of death registration that emerges as the most plausible is then chosen to correct the registered deaths by age. These then become the numerators needed in the calculation of life tables (Chapter 4). In a similar approach, Clairin et al. (1980) performed death registration assessment using Brass’s method, Preston and Hill’s method and Bourgeois-Pichat’s method before they generated life tables for the developing countries. Furthermore, this sort of analysis provides further insights as to the level of death registration in the Philippines on a national, regional, and provincial basis at various points in time. It also demonstrates the applicability or inapplicability of some of the techniques to Philippine data. Also, it yields some knowledge about the quality of death and population counts3. All existing indirect techniques give meaningful results only when data are not seriously defective and when the assumptions adopted are not strongly violated.
Specifically, the main purposes of this chapter are to: (a) test the applicability of some of the relevant existing methods of estimating the completeness of death registration on raw data collected and published in the country; (b) determine the extent to which such methods are consistent with each other; and (c) investigate whether a reliable measure of death registration coverage can be derived from these techniques. The last focus of this chapter is the choice of the best possible estimate of the level of death registration coverage. It is then possible to generate life tables for the Philippines as a whole, and for its regional and provincial components at various points in time. Summary indicators from these life tables are used to look more comprehensively at how Philippine mortality has fared over time.