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The provincial mortality data of China's 2010 population census sustains the study of regional mortality disparities, but the data suffer from the disadvantage of underestimation. Due to the deficiency of relevant information, little research on the quality of province-specific mortality data has been published with respect to the 2010 census. We estimated provincial underestimation of infant and old-age mortality, analysed regional disparities using the Developing Countries Mortality Database model life table and re-calculated sex-specific life expectancy at birth and at age 60 for the 2010 census. Results show that in most provinces the infant mortality rate is underestimated by at least 70% and that the related data for the eastern and southwestern provinces show better quality than that of other areas. Old-age mortality underestimate rates vary among provinces: the eastern, south-central and northern provinces present less severe underestimations than the southwest, northwest and northeast provinces. After adjustments, the province gap in e0 ranged from 0 to 14.8 years for boys and 0 to 15.9 years for girls, that in e60 ranged from 0 to 8.8 years for men and 0 to 9.9 years for women. Sex differences in life expectancy increased compared to the reported values of the 2010 census. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies examining the use of alternative census models in specific countries or regions suggest that the traditional full enumeration census may be heading toward its 'twilight.' However the lack of a comparative and longitudinal overview makes it difficult to evaluate whether in fact the population census is in a state of global decline. As National Statistics Offices worldwide explore options for future census transformation, a more systematic study is both timely and methodologically important. We empirically examine census practices in all countries in the world (n = 241) over the last three decennial census rounds spanning the period 1985-2014. We find that the uptake of alternative approaches has been most pronounced in Europe where there is a history of maintaining population registers and broader public acceptance of using personal data for statistical purposes. Elsewhere in the world the move towards alternative census methodologies has been very limited. The stringent preconditions necessary to make a successful transition towards a register-based census, coupled with the options offered by e-census and other technologies, suggest the full enumeration census is likely to endure for the foreseeable future, although in a more modernized form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increased demand for maternal mortality estimates as a result of the choice of the Maternal Mortality Ratio as the key indicator for Millennium Development Goal 5. Given this strong demand, the United Nations Principles and Recommendations for Population Censuses suggest the inclusion of questions on recent household deaths, plus questions to identify pregnancy-related deaths in countries lacking empirical, national estimates. This paper evaluates the results of census-based measurement of pregnancy-related mortality using three different types of consistency checks applied in selected countries. Results from these evaluations are mixed. Overall, the census approach seems to produce robust estimates of the number of births. However, the consistency and plausibility of results relating to mortality vary substantially by country and by indicator. It is not clear whether the census-based methodology performs better or worse than the frequently used sibling histories. The results presented here clearly demonstrate the need for careful data evaluation and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since population censuses are not annually implemented, population estimates are needed for the intercensal period. This paper describes simultaneous implementations of the temporal interpolation and forecasting of the population census data, aggregated by age and period. Since age equals period minus cohort, age-period-cohort decomposition suffers from the identification problem. In order to overcome this problem, the Bayesian cohort (BC) model is applied. The efficacy of the BC model for temporal interpolation is examined in comparison with official Japanese population estimates. Empirical results suggest that the BC model is expected to work well in temporal interpolation. Regarding the age-period-cohort decomposition of the Japanese census data, it is shown that the cohort effect is the largest while the other two effects are very small but not negligible. With regard to the forecasting of the Japanese population, the official population forecast considerably outperforms the BC forecast in most forecast horizons. However, the pace of increase in root mean square error for longer-term forecasting is larger in the official population forecast than in the BC forecasts. As a result, a variant of the BC forecast is best for 10-year forecast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]