Intercensal life tables consistent with population projections

Intercensal methods have been broadly used to estimate mortality in developed and less developed countries with deficient or incomplete data. These methods have several advantages over indirect methods because they do not require the use of model life tables and provide sufficiently accurate results even in the presence of age distortions and death under-registration. The drawback of these methods, however, is that generated life tables do not provide ex post projections of the baseline population that are consistent with the subsequent enumeration, even after adjusting for migration and age misreporting. This article demonstrates these inconsistencies by reviewing and comparing the results of three well established methods. We introduce a simple procedure to solve this inconsistency by providing life tables that are accurate and which generate identical projected and input populations. The empirical illustration demonstrating its efficacy draws on data from Vietnam, but the method can be extended to any context and time period.