| dc.description.abstract | It is true that Kenya is one of the African countries where
accurate, complete data on mortality are not available. Up to now,
Civil Registration has not been developed to the extent that it can
cover every birth and death which occurs. Even in the areas where
the public have been exposed to this exercise, a low proportion of the
events are registered.
This method being the only reliable source of complete data
on fertility and mortality, it is apparent that the mortality situation
can only be studied by using estimates based on other less exhaustive
methods of data collection. There are several indirect methods of
mortality estimation from data of this nature. The question which can
be posed here is whether or not these methods of estimation arrive at
the same result. If they do not, can one be singled-out as the best
performer on Kenyan data? This is the main aim of this study.
The study begins by giving a brief description of each of three
methods used in estimating infant and child mortality. Using data from
1969 and 1979 Population Censuses and some demographic surveys which
were conducted between these two dates, mortality estimates have been
calculated on provincial level by applying each of these methods. The
estimates confirmed the fact that the level of mortality, particularly
at the early ages of life is still high in most of the provinces of
the country.
In an attempt to find out whether or not there was any significant
difference between the resulting estimates, a comparison was made on
these results by.method of estimation. The comparison showed that
Trussell IS version of the methods of estimating infant and child
mortality is more suitable to use under the conditions of varying
fertility and mortality observed among the provinces.
The estimation of adult mortality offered relatively little
flexibility in that the relevant data were not available especially
in the estimation of mortality among adult males. Where data were
available, e.g. for the estimation of female adult mortality, there
was hardly any choice in the method of estimation. The results obtained
from the two methods used showed that female adult mortality is still
high in most of the provinces.
Finally, infant and child mortality estimates were patched
together with female adult mortality estimates and the result was
female life tables | en |
