Paper for the 2005 PAA Annual meeting

Abstract

Mortality crisis in Russia was discussed many times in the scientific literature. However little attention was paid to the problems of the quality of mortality statistics in Russia, which is rapidly deteriorating. During the first half of 1990s mortality from such cause as "injuries undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted" grew with particularly rapid pace. In this study we tested a hypothesis that mortality from violent causes of death (particularly in middle-aged men from marginal social groups) is concealed using death codes from the class "Symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions" (ICD-9). Reported mortality from this group of causes increased 6-fold for males and 9-fold for females in 1989-2002. This hypothesis of concealing criminal cases of violent deaths under the mask of ill-defined conditions was confirmed using case study of death certificates from the Kirov region of Russia. It is likely that mortality from violent causes in Russia is significantly underestimated by the official statistics