Brass Growth Balance Method

The Brass growth balance method estimates how complete a country's death registration is when vital statistics are incomplete but a census age distribution exists. Developed by William Brass in 1975, it rests on a simple demographic accounting identity applied above every age: in a stable population the rate at which people enter an open-ended age group must equal the population growth rate plus the rate at which they leave it by dying. Plotting the entry rate against the observed death rate above each age yields a straight line whose slope reveals the fraction of deaths actually registered.