Posted by Jim Lindgren:
Are there 24,000 extra Iraq War deaths or 98,000?--
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_15-2005_05_21.shtml#1116136866
1. THESE NUMBERS CAN BE RECONCILED.
There is a dispute over how to reconcile the recent published estimate
of 24,000 extra war-related deaths in Iraq ([1]Iraq Living Conditions
Survey 2004) with the previous [2]Lancet study, which estimated about
98,000 extra deaths from the Iraq War.
Tim Lambert [3]has argued that these numbers are really fairly close
when you recognize that the 24,000 figure represents only war-related
deaths, while the [4]Lancet study involved extra deaths from all
sources. He criticizes the reporting of the [5]Times of London:
Unfortunately, the [6]Times reports the ILCS results like this:
The 370-page report said that it was 95 per cent confident that the
toll during the war and the first year of occupation was 24,000,
but could have been between 18,000 and 29,000. About 12 per cent of
those were under 18.
The figure is far lower than the 98,000 deaths estimated in The
Lancet last October, which said that it had interviewed nearly
1,000 households. But it is far higher than other figures.
This makes a misleading comparison between the Lancet number for
all excess deaths (which includes the increase in murder, accidents
and disease) and the ILCS number for deaths directly related to the
war (which just includes deaths caused by the coalition and the
insurgents). It also misses that the time periods were different.
The authors of the ILCS report ([7]page 55) seem to have been confused
themselves on this point, which makes the resulting confusion of
commentators and journalists fully understandable (tip for the quote
to [8]Tim Blair):
The ICLS data indicates 24,000 deaths, with a 95 per cent
confidence interval from 18,000 to 29,000 deaths. The confidence
level was estimated using a linearisation technique (using SPSS
Complex Samples, version 12).
Another source (Roberts et al 2004) [Lancet] estimates the number
to be 98,000, with a confidence interval of 8,000 to 194,000. The
website �Iraq Body Count� estimates that between 14,619 and 16,804
deaths have occurred between the beginning of 2003 and 7 December
2004.
I think that [9]Tim Lambert is basically right (and he should be
commended for sorting this out). The number of violent deaths in the
Lancet report is not that much higher than the number of war-related
deaths in the more recent ILCS study, and the period is slightly
longer in the Lancet study. The 98,000 figure covers deaths from all
sources (including accidents and disease), while the new ILCS study's
24,000 estimate excludes deaths from non-War related sources of death,
such as accidents or disease.
2. OTHER THOUGHTS ON COUNTING DEATHS IN IRAQ.
But one should note that the 24,000 estimate includes all war-related
deaths and disappearances of household members in the 24 months before
being surveyed (most ILCS surveys were done in April and May 2004, a
small % were done in August 2004). Thus, the 24,000 figure covers both
most of the year before the March 2003 War and the year after. Any
deaths of those in the Iraqi military before the War or anyone who
disappeared in the year before the War would have been included in
this 24,000 figure, if the household members treated these as
War-related (though I doubt that deleting these pre-War deaths would
cause large reductions in the estimates).
There is also the problem with both of these studies that people may
be more likely to remember more recent events than earlier ones, and
may be more likely to consider some people as a member of the
household, people who lived with them recently more than people who
lived with them two years ago (household size averaged about 7.5-8
persons in the Lancet study).
For example, the [10]Lancet study distinguishes between the 14.6 month
period before the War and the 17.8 months after the War. I find it
somewhat odd that heart attack and stroke deaths are up 64% in the
later period, and accidental deaths are up more than 3-fold. And live
births are up 33% in the later (War & Post-War) period, even though
post-War pregnancies would not lead to live births until 9 months had
passed, so the rate of having children would likely have to have
jumped substantially more than 33% in the last half of the later
period. Further, household size jumps from 7.5 in the earlier period
to 8.0 in the later period.
None of these changes is impossible, and some of these differences
might be expected to some extent. But taken together, they give me
pause before concluding that people are reporting deaths and who is a
household member with the same reliability remembering before the War
as reporting on the post-War period, which is fresher in their minds.
Actually, there are some fancy statistical techniques to explore
whether undercounts are more of a problem in one period than another,
so-called capture/recapture techniques. If the researchers
independently took the same information from multiple sources (such as
more than one person in the same household interviewed separately on
different days, or a next-door neighbor asked about their neighbor's
family and deaths, or a police or coroner�s list of deaths), the
researchers could compare the various lists to see if they overlapped
for the recent period more than for the earlier period. If they did,
then the methodology would adjust the total death count more for
undercounts in the earlier period than in the later period.
Personally, I wonder how much of the substantial differences between
the earlier and later period (eg, number of births, household size,
cardiac deaths, accidental deaths) are the result of differences in
remembering events and household composition. But Tim Lamvbert is
correct that the Lancet and ILCS studies tell roughly similar stories
on violent death rates from the Iraq War itself.
References
1. http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf
2. http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
3. http://elgar.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2005/05#lancet34
4. http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
5. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1610143,00.html
6. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1610143,00.html
7. http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf
8. http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/iraqs_dead_counted/
9. http://elgar.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2005/05#lancet34
10. http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
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