Mortality under-Registration by Ethnic Groups in Colombia

John-Jairo Loja , Southampton University
Sabu S. S. Padmadas, University of Southampton
Jason Hilton, University of Southampton

Mortality registration is one of the major challenges for governments in terms of the limitations in capturing the total number of deaths that occur over a certain period of time and across space. In Colombia, under-registration of deaths is heterogeneous across provinces and regions, but deaths in ethnic groups such as Afro-descendants and Indigenous, are more likely to be under-registered. Two data sources were used for this paper: first, mortality information from the Colombian National Population Census 2018; and second, the Mortality Registers of the year 2017, in order to estimate the level of completeness of mortality registration. The results show two key things. First, that under-registration decreases with age. The second finding is that deaths of Afro-descendants and Indigenous are about five times and twice more likely to be non-registered in the national vital statistics, respectively, than deaths from the White-Mestizo population.

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 Presented in Session 25. Advancements in Mortality analysis