New Article in “Population Studies” • 26.04.2024Method for Redistributing Ill-Defined Causes of Death

Analysis of causes of death is crucial for monitoring an epidemiological situation and for developing adequate policy responses. However, the comparability of cause-specific mortality data depends on the proportion of ill-defined deaths. To eliminate the bias resulting from the varying proportions of such causes over time and between populations, deaths from ill-defined causes need to be reassigned to other categories.

For this reason, the authors provide a thorough documentation of and tools for the practical implementation of a regression-based method for redistributing ill-defined causes of death, as first proposed by Sully Ledermann in the 1950s. The method relies on subnational cause-specific mortality data to estimate unbiased death rates at both national and subnational levels. They refined Ledermann’s method by elaborating on its mathematical properties, making additional adjustments, and evaluating the performance of the approach through simulations. To illustrate the practical application of the method, they used French subnational cause-of-death data.

To promote the novel approach, the authors provide the R code for performing all calculations.

Grigoriev, Pavel; Bonnet, Florian; Perdrix, Elsa (2024): Method for Redistributing Ill-Defined Causes of Death. Population Studies (online first).