EVALUATION OF THE CENSUS QUESTION ON LAST LIVE-BORN CHILD SURVIVAL

This study analyses the experience in Latin America regarding the use of the census question on last live-born child survival. Such question has been included in recent population census with a view of estimating infant mortality. However, it is not always possible to compute all the elements needed to obtain the probability of dying within the first year of life, thus the estimates suffer from some methodological vices that do not offset the costs of introducing a census question.

In this paper, practices across countries that included the question on last live-born child survival in their 2000 and 2010 census are compared, highlighting differences in the question formulation and the scope of the data. The authors estimate infant mortality for those countries having included this question. These estimations are compared to those presented in the publication Child mortality: a database of Latin America since 1960 drafted by ECLAC and UNICEF.

Findings show that figures derived from the census question on last live-born child differ significantly from those published in the ECLAC-UNICEF study for all scenarios and countries analysed. These results show that the use of the question on last live-born child survival in censuses is not performing robustly.