Mortality by education in the Czech Republic: a study based on census-linked death records

Marketa Pechholdova, University of Economics, Prague (VSE)
Fiala Tomas, University of Economics, Prague (VSE)
Jitka Langhamrova, University of Economics, Prague (VSE)
Martina Miskolczi, University of Economics, Prague (VSE)
Jana Vrabcova Langhamrova, University of Economics, Prague (VSE)

Socioeconomic variables in death records are often biased by incompleteness and imprecision. Additionally, in the Czech Republic, the information about education of the deceased has been provided on voluntary basis since 2005. As a result, the share of missing information has increased rapidly up to 66% (in 2013). In the Census 2011, only 5% of records have missing information about education. We have conducted a record linkage of deaths occurring 1 year after the census. For legal reasons, we could not use the unique personal identifier. Instead, we used of combination of year of birth, sex, citizenship, exact address and marital status. Deterministic linkage on this combination yielded 85% of matches. Further 5% were matched using probabilistic techniques. Linked and unlinked estimates of mortality differentials were compared. The linked records were then used to evaluate mortality differentials by education, with respect to cause of death.