Concepts and definitions
- Age
In connection with vital events, age data refer to the age on the day the event took place. Average age is obtained by adding up the ages of all persons involved in the same event at the time of the event, after which the sum is divided by the number of these persons. As the used age of a person is given in full years at the time of the event, it is not the exact age of that person. For this reason, it is assumed when computing average age that the persons were aged x+0.5, on average, at the time of the event.
- Age-specific death rate
The age-specific death rate refers to the number of deaths per 1,000 of the mean population in the age group in question.
- Deaths
Deaths have to be reported immediately either to a physician or to the police. The health care unit or the physician has to report the death to the Population Information System or its maintainer (Acts 459/1973, 858/1997, 1065/2009). A death certificate is issued by a physician. In exceptional cases a report on death can be made, after consultation with a physician, by the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) or the police. The death certificates and reports are to be delivered to THL for checking. THL has to report deaths on which a death report has been issued to the register office which enters the information in the Population Information System (Decrees 948/1973, 99/1998, 1642/2009). During the transition period of the reform of the state regional administration the physicians supply the death certificates to be checked by the Regional State Administrative Agency. Regional State Administrative Agencies forward the death certificates to forensic pathologists in charge of THL's checking. THL is to deliver death certificates and reports to Statistics Finland monthly.
Statistics on deaths are based on data derived from the Population Register Centre's Population Information System maintained by local register offices. People who lived permanently in Finland at the time of their death are entered in the statistics on deaths in Finland. Death certificates are used at Statistics Finland for compiling cause-of-death statistics, which are published as a separate series. The number of deaths in the population statistics differs somewhat from the figure given in the statistics on causes of death compiled on the basis of death certificates.
- General death rate
General death rate indicates the number of deaths per 1,000 or 100,000 persons of the mean population.
- Increase of population
Increase of population is the sum of excess of births over deaths and net immigration.
- Language
Information on language is obtained from the Population Information System. At the same time as parents register the name of their new-born, they also indicate the child's mother tongue. That language is retained in the Population Information System unless it is changed upon separate application.
Languages are classified by the Population Register Centre according to the ISO 639 standard. The future language classification ISO-639-1 was already adopted for the 2000 population census.
- Life expectancy
The number of years that a person of a given age would live provided that the rate of mortality remains unchanged.
- Marital status
The information on marital status is derived from the Population Information System of the Population Register Centre. It should be noted that common-law marriage or cohabiting is not a marital status. People representing all marital status categories may be cohabiting, including those who are still officially married.
The current divorce regulations no longer recognise the concept of legal separation. Those persons who are legally separated on the basis of the old divorce provisions prior to 1 January 1988 and still living apart have been slotted under married persons in the statistics.
Same-sex couples have been able to register their partnership in Finland as of 1 March 2002. For reasons of data protection, in municipal tables those living in a registered partnership are classified together with married persons, as are those divorced or widowed from a registered partnership with divorced and widowed persons.
The classification of marital status is as follows:
- Unmarried
- Married
- Divorced
- Widowed
- Partner in a registered partnership
- Divorced from a registered partnership
- Widowed after a registered partnership
- Perinatal mortality
Perinatal mortality refers to the number of stillbirths and those who died in their first week of life per 1,000 births.
- Probability of death
The probability of death at some age x refers to the probability of a person living until the age of x to die during that year of age.
- Sex
The information about sex has been obtained from the Population Information System.
Official Statistics of Finland (OSF):
Deaths [e-publication].
ISSN=1798-2545. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 19.5.2013].
Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/kuol/kas_en.html.
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