[The issue of quality of Russian cause-specific mortality statistics at old ages]

The paper presents a brief analysis on the quality of cause-specific mortality statistics at old ages in Russia. Two aspects are in focus: the regional differences in approaches for choosing the underlying cause of death and the comparison of Russian coding practice with the practices of some other European countries. The results obtained indicate that there are certain problems with the quality of cause-of-death coding at old ages in Russia. No unified approach to coding deaths as caused by «Senility» is used at a sub-national level. This leads to the distortion of the regional cause-specific mortality structures. Furthermore for many groups of causes Russian death rates are much lower than those in European countries. This peculiarity is caused by the specificity of Russian cause-of-death coding practice, which results in underestimating the mortality from certain causes at old ages.