Expanding and Improving Vital Statistics

Abstract

VITAL STATISTICIANS generally think of their program as consisting of two related parts, registration and statistics. Traditionally, has meant tabulation of data derived routinely from registration certificates. These tabulations may be considered basic vital statistics. To meet a growing demand for additional data, the concept of vital statistics is being expanded to cover supplementary statistics anchored to the vital records. The increasing demand for supplementary vital statistics is not difficult to understand. Vital events are crucial in people's lives, and consequently they are central to many other events. Economists, demographers, and sociaI scientists are among the host of nonhealth users of basic and supplementary vital statistics. In public health, the demand for supplementary vital data has been stimulated by the growing concern with chronic diseases, which has created interest in studies that relate the person to his total environment. The demands for more vital and related statistics presently exceed our ability to supply them. With a few notable exceptions, such as tabulations of multiple causes of deaths, we have pretty well exploited the items on the vital records. We do not mean to imriply that all possible applications are being made of our tabulations of basic vital statistics; this is not the case. We mean merely that there is little possibility of developing tabulations of vital statistics involving new variables from the data now provided on the vital records. How, then, should we proceed in developing new vital statistics as needs materialize? It is natural to think first of the possibility of adding new items to the vital records, but the prospects here are not encouraging. The records are legal as well as statistical documents; they cannot be encumbered with what the legal mind regards as extraneous. In fact, vital statisticians themselves would be reluctant to add too many new items or certain items. If we should ask the physician, the hospital stafl, or the funeral director to provide routinely a lot of supplementary information, the request might endanger the quality of the basic data they are now providing. Furthermore, the possibility of getting more vital data by revising the vital records is not good because our system binds us to infrequent revisions. Even if we could overcome these difficulties, we would find it inefficient routinely to collect supplementary information on the vital record itself because it is rarely necessary to obtain such information for every vital event, be it birth, death, marriage, or divorce. Because of the samnpling errors that can be tolerated, Dr. Sirken is chief of the Actuarial Analysis and Survey Methods Section, National Office of Vital Statistics, Public Health Service. Dr. Dunn is chief of the National Office of Vital Statistics. This paper is adapted from a talk Dr. Sirken gave at the 1957 meeting of the Southern Branch of the American Public Health Association and the North Carolina Public Health Association.