Vital Statistics

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vital statistics are statistics on principal events in the life of an individual. They usually are gathered at the time of an event such as birth, marriage, the dissolution of a marriage, and death. Vital statistics are commonly compiled from records of vital events registered through offices that are organized as part of a vital registration system.

Vital registration systems are generally organized units of government. They presuppose a well-established civil administrative organization with trained officials and, most usually, local offices as well as a central one. Local offices are primarily responsible for the collection of information, while both local and central offices process the information for statistical purposes. Local offices are generally responsible for maintaining a legally valid record of the vital events. Thus they are useful to the inhabitants of the population when it becomes necessary to prove a vital event such as birth, nationality, descent, or relationship by marriage. The information-processing offices that provide vital statistics in summary form are charged with this responsibility in the interest of the formation of public policy. [See Government Statistics.]

The most accurate vital statistics are found in countries that are in an advanced state of economic development; in many of the less developed countries vital registration is still rudimentary, partial, or inaccurate. In order to be complete and reliable, vital registration must be compulsory, i.e., the law must place an obligation on defined classes of persons to notify the registering official of the occurrence of a vital event. This is usually easiest in the case of marriage, which in most countries involves a ceremony before an official of the state or the church, who will record the event, which confers a new status on the spouses. In those countries in which consensual unions are common, however, marriage statistics may give an incomplete count of the number of women who are exposed to a relatively high risk of pregnancy. Furthermore, death registration may be easier to enforce than birth registration, since the disposal of a human body is normally subject to police or sanitary regulations, which require a certificate of registration of death to be produced before the body can be disposed of.

History of vital registration . Vital registration was often preceded by parochial registration of baptisms, burials, and marriages. Parochial registration, however, tends to be incomplete, particularly in the case of births, since not all children who are born are baptized; in particular, the practice relating to the registration of babies who die before baptism may vary in different parishes. In Scandinavia, the work of registration is still carried out by the clergy, although they act as agents of the state.

The oldest systems of vital registration are found in the Scandinavian countries: Finland started in 1628 and Denmark in 1646, Norway and Sweden following in 1685 and 1686 respectively. In America, the General Court in Boston enacted a registration law for the colony of Massachusetts in 1639 which stated “that there be records kept … of the days of every marriage, birth and death of every person within this jurisdiction.” In 1644 an explicit obligation was placed on “all parents, masters of servants, executors and administrators ... to bring unto the clerk of the writs the names of such belonging to them, as shall either be born or die.” The law was tightened in 1692, when penalty clauses for failure to register were reinforced, but the system remained incomplete until the nineteenth century (Gutman 1959).

In England and Wales parochial registration of baptisms and burials began as early as 1538. John Graunt, who is generally considered the father of modern demography, utilized these data in his work Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of Mortality, which was first published in 1662. An act passed in 1694 provided for the registration of births and deaths throughout the country, but it was in force for only ten years and few of the returns made under its provisions have been located. Estimates of population in England and Wales in the eighteenth century have to be based on the parochial registers, since the system of civil registration was not established until 1836. Even then, the Births and Deaths Registration Act did not lay down any penalties for failure to comply with its provision, an omission that was not repaired until 1874.

In other European countries vital registration was gradually introduced throughout the nineteenth century, and was complete in most areas by the beginning of the twentieth century. In some states, however, compulsory and complete registration was introduced very much later; in Poland, for example, it was not introduced until 1946. In Russia, vital registration was in the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities before the revolution and was only transferred to the civil power afterwards. A registration area was built up, and by 1926 it was working with reasonable efficiency in European Russia. It has gradually been extended to cover the rest of the Soviet Union.

Outside Europe, North America, and Australia, registration is more recent. Japan, the most industrialized and developed country of Asia, introduced a modern registration law in 1898, although household registers had been kept before that date. In India and Pakistan no complete and compulsory system of vital registration exists at present, although partial and incomplete systems operate in a number of areas. In Africa the position is even less satisfactory. Birth and death registration in colonial days was applied only to the population of European, and sometimes to that of Asian, origin; for the indigenous African population, registration operated in a few towns at the most and was often of questionable accuracy. In Latin America, although registration became compulsory in most areas in the nineteenth century, the systems were frequently lacking in accuracy and left much to be desired in other respects.

In the United States vital registration developed slowly. As is the case in most federal countries, the responsibility for vital registration lies with the individual states and not with the federal government. By 1859 eight states had established registration systems, and the progress was resumed after the Civil War. The federal government’s influence made itself felt after 1902, when the Bureau of the Census was established as a permanent organization. In 1903 Congress passed a law stressing the importance of a unified system of registration, and model registration laws were drafted for the guidance of individual states. A death registration area and later a birth registration area were set up, admission to which depended upon the achievement of a certain degree of completeness of registration.

Administration of vital registration . Systems of vital registration are normally administered through a network of local registration offices, each of which is responsible for a well-defined local area. It is often convenient to have the boundary of the registration district coincide with that of a local government unit. The onus of informing the registrar of the occurrence of a vital event is placed by law on a definite informant or a substitute when the informant is not available. In the case of births, the legal informant is normally the parent, although in a few countries—of which the United States is the outstanding example—responsibility rests with the attendant at the birth. Obviously, this arrangement is possible only when the vast majority of births are medically attended; and, on the whole, registration by the parent is preferred. However, the completeness of birth registration depends on other factors than the identity of the informant.

In the case of a death, the obligation to register again most frequently devolves upon a relative, or, failing him, a person present at the death. In the United States and New Zealand this responsibility, however, devolves upon the undertaker who arranges for the funeral. In many of the more developed countries, the cause of death must also be stated at registration; this responsibility usually has to be carried out by a medical practitioner. Thus, in England and Wales the medical certificate of death is given by the doctor who attended the deceased before death or (in cases of sudden death) by the pathologist who conducted the autopsy. Either of these persons can notify the registrar of the death, but the obligation to register it rests with the next of kin. In the case of marriages the informants are normally the groom and bride, although in some areas it is the person solemnizing the marriage who actually registers it.

The time allowed for registration in different countries varies; it is normally shorter for a death than a birth. As an extreme example, the Cuban law (as of 1950) required a death to be registered immediately, but a birth only had to be registered within a year of its occurrence. In England and Wales five days are allowed for a death registration, but 42 days for the registration of births.

The form in which vital events are registered varies from country to country. As the registration system serves as the legal record of the vital event, a certificate of registration is normally issued to each informant. This may carry all the information obtained at registration, but more frequently some of the material collected is used for statistical purposes only and does not appear on the certificate. The minimum information collected at a birth is normally the date and place of its occurrence, the sex of the child, and the name of its father (in the case of a legitimate birth). In some vital statistics systems, however, a good deal of additional information is collected, e.g., the age of the mother, the occupation or age of the father, the length of the parents’ marriage, how many brothers and sisters the child has, and in some cases its weight at birth. For death registration, the name, age, and sex of the deceased person, together with the date and place of death, constitute the minimum amount of information desirable. In many vital statistics systems information is sought regarding the decedent’s marital status, occupation, and cause of death. The minimum information normally required when a marriage is registered is the marital condition of the bride and groom and their ages, although often details about their occupations and sometimes the occupations of their parents are also included.

There are a number of common difficulties connected with vital registration and vital statistics. In the case of death registration, there have been periodical revisions of the International List of Causes of Death. These revisions have affected the comparability of cause-specific death rates over time. Moreover, the treatment of multiple causes of death may differ in different countries, although the World Health Organization has recently made recommendations, endorsed by the Statistical Commission of the UN, for the adoption of a uniform International Medical Certificate of Death.

Another difficulty lies in the definition of a live birth and in the classification of stillbirths or fetal deaths. Thus, in Belgium a child born alive but dying before registration (that is, within three days of birth) is registered as stillborn. In Colombia, stillbirths are not registrable; in Cuba, survival for at least one day is required before a birth can be registered as live. In Great Britain any child born after the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy that at any time after being expelled from its mother drew breath or showed any sign of life is regarded as liveborn. Stillbirth or fetal death rates calculated in accordance with different definitions therefore cannot be comparable.

The uses of vital statistics . The information collected at vital registration is used principally in the study of population movements. Since censuses can only be taken periodically (often at decennial intervals), vital statistics serve as the principal instrument for making intercensal estimates of population. The decomposition of population growth into births, deaths, and migration is essential if its nature and causes are to be fully understood, and a knowledge of mortality and fertility rates is also necessary if reasonable assumptions are to be made for projection of population trends.

Historically, interest first arose in studying mortality statistics. Reference has already been made to John Graunt’s pioneer study in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, interest in accurate mortality statistics was stimulated by the growth of life insurance, for which adequate data on the variation of mortality with age and sex were necessary, and by the struggle against infectious and other diseases. In this connection, special mention must be made of the work of William Farr, who entered the British General Register Office as compiler of abstracts shortly after its foundation in 1837 and who served in it until his retirement in 1880. He developed the British system of death registration into an instrument for measuring the sanitary condition of the country, and his studies on mortality differences between different occupations contributed to the understanding of industrial hazards. Farr was also one of the prime movers in making mortality statistics internationally comparable and in constructing a statistical nosology of diseases that was to be used in the study of causes of death. The International List of Causes of Death has been revised from time to time, and at present the responsibility for the list lies with the World Health Organization.

Birth registrations form the basis of both fertility and natality statistics. In connection with census data on the structure of the population, they can be used to assess marital fertility and to establish fertility differences between different social groups; they may also be useful in studies on pop-ulstion genetics. In industrial societies, in which mortality is low, population projections will be dependent mainly on the assumptions made with respect to fertility and on the assessment of trends. Complex breakdown of births by parental age, occupation, duration of marriage, birth order, and sometimes interval since preceding birth, are required to make reasonable assumptions; and registration systems have become more complex in order that this information may be made available. Much the same considerations apply to the study of marriage statistics.

Eugene Grebenik

[See alsoCensus; Family, article ondisorganization anddissolution; Fertility; Government statistics; Migration; Mortality; Nuptiality; Population, article onthe field of demography; Public health; Sociology, articles onthe fieldand onthe early history of social research; and the biographies ofGraunt; Ko?ro?sy; Lotka.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benjamin, Bernard (1959) 1960 Elements of Vital Statistics. London: Allen & Unwin; Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Edge, Percy Granville 1944 Vital Statistics and Public Health Work in the Tropics. London: Baillière, Tindal & Cox.

Farr, WilliamVital Statistics: A Memorial Volume of Selections from the Writings of William Farr. Edited by Noel A. Humphreys. London: The Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, 1885.

Gutman, Robert 1959 Birth and Death Registration in Massachusetts 1639-1900. New York: Milbank Memorial Fund. ? First published in the Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Volume 36, 1958, and Volume 37, 1959.

Koren, John (editor) 1918 The History of Statistics: Their Development and Progress in Many Countries. Published for the American Statistical Association. New York: Macmillan.

Kuczynski, Robert R. 1948-1953 Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire. 3 vols. Oxford Univ. Press. ? Volume 1: West Africa, 1948. Volume 2: South African High Commission Territories: East and Central Africa, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, 1949. Volume 3: West Indian and American Territories, 1953.

Lorimer, Frank 1961 Demographic Information on Tropical Africa. Boston Univ. Press.

Spiegelman, Mortimer 1963 The Organization of the Vital and Health Statistics Monograph Program. Pages 230-249 in Milbank Memorial Fund, Emerging Techniques in Population Research: Proceedings of a Round Table at the Thirty-ninth Annual Conference …September 18-19, 1962. New York: The Fund.

United Nations, Statistical Office 1955 Handbook of Vital Statistics Methods. Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 7. New York: United Nations.

Westergaard, Harald 1932 Contributions to the History of Statistics. London: King.