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The purpose of this paper is to review the major sources of data on mortality, morbidity and health in Europe and in other developed regions in order to examine their potential for analysing mortality and morbidity levels and trends. The review is primarily focused on routinely collected information covering a whole country. No attempt is made to draw up an inventory of sources by country; the paper deals instead with the pros and cons of each source for mortality and morbidity studies in demography. While each source considered separately can already yield useful, though partial, results, record linkage among data sources can significantly improve the analysis. Record linkage can also lead to the detection of possible causal associations that could eventually be confirmed. More generally, Big Data can reveal changing mortality and morbidity trends and patterns that could lead to preventive measures being taken rather than more costly curative ones.

AbstractThis study presents some new results on parental age as a risk factor for child survival. The study is based on individual registration forms for live births and infant deaths collected in Hungary from 1984 to 1988. Logistic regression models have been fitted for early neonatal and neonatal mortality on the one hand, and post‐neonatal mortality on the other hand. Children of older males and females have significantly higher early neonatal and neonatal mortality rates compared to those of younger males and females. The impact of age of both parents remains, however, slighter than that of other biological characteristics such as previous number of fetal deaths, induced abortions, or live births. The authors discuss possible biological explanations.

The ability of infant mortality and health indicators to monitor health conditions in early infancy, and their broader use as indicators of the general level of socio-economic development are discussed from three points of view. These are: (i) the increasing impact of differences in legal definitions of live and stillbirths on the comparability of the infant mortality figures produced by vital statistics; (ii) the validity of mortality measures to monitor health; (iii) the comparability of social inequalities in infant health and mortality over time and across countries.