Lesson 5: Measuring Vital Statistical Rates in Demography

• Demography is the study of characteristics or attributes of human population.
• Demographic variables are used in describing the characteristics of human population like the size of the population and how it changes over a period of time.
• Demographic data are essential elements in health program planning, disease control and health information dissemination.
• Vital statistics refer to the data that records significant events and dates in human life.
• Vital statistics include data on births, deaths and marriages as well as the measures of illness and diseases.
• Mortality refers primarily to the data on deaths
• number of deaths in a calendar year. Affected by age and sex composition of the population.

  Annual crude death rate
• Age specific death rate

  the number of deaths in a specific or particular age group in a calendar year divided by the population of the same age group pf that year. Eg 11-20 y/o
• The cause specific death rate

  defined as the number of deaths that occurred in a specific cause in a calendar year. Eg, Car accidents
• Infant mortality rate (IMR)

  Number of deaths among infants under 1 year of age in a calendar year per 1,000 live births in the same period.
• Maternal Mortality ratio

  measure the number of deaths due to diseases directly related to pregnancy, delivery, and puerperium
• Fertility rate

  pertain to population control., specifically useful in planning and designing maternal and child health care
• Morbidity

  pertain to disease statistics which are gathered primarily to provide information on the prevalence of disease
• A satisfactory proxy for incidence if survival in not related to the risk factors under investigation

  Mortality
• Often used as an alternative to incidence in the study of rarer chronic diseases

  Prevalence