Publisher's Synopsis
Model life tables provide ways of deriving accurate mortality schedules or predicting future trends from scanty data. In settings where accurate data are unavailable, these provide invaluable tools for estimating mortality conditions among populations. Constructing model life tables requires the availability of accurate empirical life tables that depict the different patterns of age-specific risks of death in the populations covered. Starting in the early 1960s, a number of field-based research stations were established to collect longitudinal data on births, deaths and migrations, covering some geographic areas in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. In the late 1990s, these research sites teamed up to form an international network, INDEPTH. This book presents model life tables for Africa using accurate empirical data from 19 INDEPTH demographic surveillance system sites throughout sub-Saharan Africa. A modified Brass logic system is used to produce mortality models that are unique in that they incorporate for the first time empirical and accurate data representing prevailing mortality patterns in sub-Saharan Africa, taking into account the effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
