Type | Thesis or Dissertation - Master of Philosophy in Demography |
Title | Infant and under-five mortality in South Africa: perspectives from the 2011 census and the 2012 HSRC Survey |
Author(s) | |
Publication (Day/Month/Year) | 2014 |
URL | https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/13143/thesis_com_2014_kamangira_b.pdf?sequence=1 |
Abstract | This research focuses on estimating infant and under-five mortality in South Africa for the period 1998-2012, both to update previous estimates taking into account new data and to assess the reasonableness of all estimates. Data from the 2011 Census and the 2012 HSRC survey were used for this purpose. The 2011 Census provided data from deaths reported by households as well as the survival of the most recent births. The 2012 HSRC provided full birth history data for women aged 15-49 which were used for direct estimation of childhood mortality. Deaths reported by households together with census estimates of the number of children under the age of five are used to produce estimates of infant and under-five mortality using the synthetic cohort life table approach. Blacker and Brass’s previous birth technique is used to provide an estimate of infant mortality based on the survival of the most recent birth in the 24 months preceding the census after correcting for the bias in the proportion dead among most recent births relative to the proportion dead among all births. The under-five mortality rate corresponding to this infant mortality rate is estimated using the ratio of under-five mortality to infant mortality as observed in the Princeton West level 19 model life tables. The direct method for estimating childhood mortality is applied to the 2012 HSRC full birth history data. After imputing the exact dates of birth and death, locating deaths in time and calculating the exposure to risk of dying, the method of deriving period life tables is then followed to estimate q )1( and q )5( . Results show that the correction for the bias in the proportion dead among the most recent births relative to the proportion dead among all births in the Previous Birth Technique estimates did not work as estimates were still too low relative to those produced by other researchers. Also, the direct estimates from the 2012 HSRC survey were lower than those produced by other researchers owing to too few deaths recorded in this survey and a large proportion of these missing ages at death. Only the estimates from deaths reported by households were found to be useful. Thus, it was concluded that the data from the 2012 HSRC survey and the survival of most recent births from the 2011 Census do not produce reliable estimates of childhood mortality. It is recommended that a DHS-type survey should be conducted with one of its purposes being to investigate the issues around childhood mortality estimation in South Africa, particularly to improve on the quality of data available for estimation of childhood mortality and to investigate further why the current methods are failing to produce 4 reasonable estimates of childhood mortality. Further research to investigate the extent of the bias in the proportion of children dead among most recent births relative to the proportion dead among all births is also needed. |
» | South Africa - Census 2011 |