the quality of demographic statistics in Russia is better in the regions of the North-West, and worse in the Far East and the Caucasus

In Russia, it is necessary to improve the methodology for accounting for the causes of death, since in the statistics of many regions the proportion of deaths from unidentified causes is excessively high, follows from the work of experts from the Higher School of Economics (HSE). After evaluating the data of the subjects of the Russian Federation on the causes of death using a specially calculated index, the HSE concluded that the best situation with the quality of statistics in this area is in the Penza Region, the Perm Territory, and the Kurgan Region. The worst result – in the Sakhalin region, in the Murmansk and Samara regions.

Calculations of the quality index of mortality statistics are contained in the study “Assessment of the quality of mortality statistics by causes in the regions of the Russian Federation” of the A. G. Vishnevsky Institute of Demography of the Higher School of Economics. Rosstat data for 2011–2021 were used to determine the proportion of unspecified causes of death and construct the index itself. Let us explain that now the collection of data on the dead in the Russian Federation consists of several stages: first, the cause of death is established in a medical institution, then it is entered into a medical certificate, which subsequently becomes the basis for recording the death certificate of the registry office (see “Kommersant” dated May 22, 2020 of the year).

As the authors of the work explain, along with known causes of death, for example, from a specific disease, when coding cases of death, a class of unidentified causes is also used. This distorts the idea of ​​the true structure of mortality by cause and makes it difficult to make sound management decisions in the field of healthcare. Among the factors for the low quality of accounting for the causes of death are both the unskilled work of pathologists and the deliberate underestimation of the proportion of deaths from a particular disease (this may occur depending on the current goals of the healthcare system, for more details see Kommersant dated April 27, 2021).

The proposed HSE index is calculated as the geometric mean of three components-indices: the quality of mortality statistics from external causes, from diseases of the circulatory system (CVD), and from other causes. The closer the value of these indices to one, the higher the quality of the statistics. The quality index of mortality statistics from external causes reflects socially significant facts (alcohol and drug poisoning, murders and suicides). The CSD index is important because most deaths are due to these diseases. Finally, the quality index of mortality statistics from other causes reveals distortions in coding in other classes.

According to the composite index determined by analysts, the best position for accounting for the causes of death among men is in the Penza region (0.87), in the Perm region (0.86) and in the Kurgan region (0.85). With regard to women, the Penza region (0.89) and the Perm Territory (0.86), as well as Buryatia (0.86) also have the most reliable statistics. The lowest values ​​of the index are in the Sakhalin region (0.48 for men and 0.55 for women), in Murmansk (0.55 and 0.59) and Samara (0.55 and 0.68) and Astrakhan regions (0.62 and 0.77). In general, almost all eastern (with the exception of Buryatia and Yakutia), Western Siberian and southern regions of Russia, as well as the North Caucasian republics, have low quality indices of mortality statistics from external causes and, as a result, low final indices. The average Russian quality index of mortality statistics over the past three years is 0.76 for men and 0.81 for women.

Anastasia Manuylova