In Costa Rica, the production of vital statistics is the responsibility of the Unidad de Estadísticas Demográficas (UED) which belongs to the Área de Censos y Encuestas of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos. .

Vital statistics arise from the processing of information obtained from certificates of vital events (births, deaths and marriages) whose registration is in charge of the Civil Registry of Costa Rica. For this purpose, a tripartite form has been established, where the original copy is from the Civil Registry, the first copy for the INEC and the second copy for the mother of the newborn. As of mid-2016, the digital declaration of birth began, however, the physical record is still maintained.

As of 2016, births begin to be registered online, for which the information is entered into the Unit through a database which is coupled at the end of the processing of physical certificates, which have not disappeared from the all.

Specifically, the birth statistics reflect the frequency and intensity with which births occur throughout the country. In addition, it is possible to know the sociodemographic profile of the mother and father, as well as the birth data.

All these variables allow, among other aspects, to create indicators such as the global fertility rate, the crude birth rate, as well as to make population estimates. These data are used both nationally and internationally.

It should be noted that because there is a level of lag in birth statistics in the country, operationally all cases that occurred in the last 10 years are included, including the calendar year that is being worked on. In this way, for example, for the year 2017, all those births that occurred in the period 2008-2017 but that were registered in the year 2017 are included, and so on for the other years.

This lag, it has been verified that it is compensated at the national level year after year, in this way, it is expected that what was not registered in 2017, will enter in 2018 and this data will be approximately equal to what is stopped enrolling in 2016 and enrolled in 2017 and so on for all years. Late registrations are published respecting the year in which the birth occurred.

Data description and definitions:

Variable	Description	Type
Anotrab	Year of work	Discrete
Mestrab	Work month	Discrete
Nacio	Type of birth	Discrete
Sexo	Sex of the newborn	Discrete
Peso	Birth weight in grams	Discrete
pesorec	Weight at birth in groups (grams)	Discrete
Estatura	Height at birth in centimeters	Discrete
estrec	Height at birth in groups (centimeters)	Discrete
Provocu	Province of occurrence	Discrete
Pcocu	Canton of occurrence	Discrete
Pcdocu	District of occurrence	Discrete
Instnac	Institution where the birth occurred	Discrete
Dianac	Birthday	Discrete
Mesnac	Birth month	Discrete
Anonac	Year of birth	Discrete
Leyp	Responsible parenthood law	Discrete
Edadpad	Father's age	Discrete
edpadrec	Father's age in groups	Discrete
Paispad	Father's country of origin	Discrete
Nacpad	Father's nationality	Discrete
grocupad	Father's occupation groups	Discrete
Nivedpad	Father's educational level	Discrete
Hijtepad	Children by the father	Discrete
Escivpad	Father's marital status	Discrete
Edadmad	Mother's age	Discrete
edmadrec	Mother's age in groups	Discrete
Paismad	Mother's country of origin	Discrete
Nacmad	Mother's nationality	Discrete
grocumad	Mother's occupation groups	Discrete
Nivedmad	Mother's educational level	Discrete
Escivmad	Mother's marital status	Discrete
Provincia	Mother's province of residence	Discrete
Pc	Canton of residence of the mother	Discrete
Pcd	Mother's district of residence	Discrete
IU	Urbanity index	Discrete
Reginec	Regionalization of mideplan	Discrete
Regsalud	Regionalization ministry of health	Discrete
Paratend	Person who attended the birth	Discrete
Mesesemb	Months of pregnancy	Discrete
Hijosten	Children born by the mother	Discrete
Abortos	Total abortions	Discrete
Totconsul	Total queries	Discrete
Medcons	Consultations by doctor	Discrete
Declara	Person declaring birth	Discrete
Provregis	Province of registration	Discrete
Pcregis	Registration canton	Discrete
Pcdregis	Registration district	Discrete
Diadeclara	Day the declaration is made	Discrete
Mesdeclara	Month in which the declaration is made	Discrete
Anodeclara	Year the declaration is made	Discrete
Filiacion	Filiation	Discrete
Inscen	Place where the statement is made	Discrete

Other concepts and definitions:

Birth: is the expulsion or complete extraction from the mother's body of a product of conception, (regardless of the duration of the pregnancy), which after such separation, breathes or manifests any other sign of life, such as heartbeat, umbilical cord pulsations, or voluntary effective movement of muscles, whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut and whether or not it is attached to the placenta.

Births within a union: are all those births where the declaration of the marital status of the mother and father corresponds to married or in free union; since from the year 2002 the birth certificate includes the category of free union in the declaration of the civil status of the mother and father.

Births out of union: are all those births where the declaration of the marital status of the mother and father corresponds to single, widowed, separated or divorced.

Crude birth rate: indicates the number of births per thousand inhabitants; that is, the ratio of the number of annual births with respect to the total population on June 30 of the year, per thousand.

Global fertility rate, TFR: is the number of sons and daughters that each woman would have on average at the end of the fertile period, if she had sons and daughters during her lifetime, according to the fertility rates by age observed in the country and year of interest and, in addition, these women are not affected by mortality from birth to the end of the fertile period. When the TFR of a country is 2.1 children per woman, it is said that fertility is at replacement level, that is, that couples are having only the number of sons and daughters necessary to replace themselves.

Gross reproduction rate: is the number of daughters that each woman would have on average at the end of the fertile period, if during her life she has sons and daughters according to the fertility rates by age observed in the country and year of interest and, furthermore, these women are not affected by mortality from birth to the end of the fertile period.

Net reproduction rate: is the number of daughters that each woman would have on average at the end of the fertile period, if during her life she has sons and daughters according to the fertility rates by age observed in the country and year of interest and, in addition, these women are affected by mortality by age observed in the country and year of interest from birth to the end of the fertile period.

Data processing

DATA EDITING

The organization and preparation of the data is determined by the following stages:

Reception of material: Officials of the UED go to the central offices of the Civil Registry, once a week, to collect all those certificates that have been sent by the hospital centers or by direct reception of the Civil Registry.

Sorting of the material: Once the material has been entered into the UED, it is classified by month and by province of registration for processing and later filing. In this way, work packages are labeled and stored by province and month of registration. For example: Births - San José - January, and so on for each province and month of registration.

Coding and criticism: The criticism consists of carrying out an exhaustive review of the information contained in the birth certificate, in this way it is possible to identify cases with missing information or, certificates that were made to stillbirths or, certificates who have already exceeded the 10-year period that the Unit has established for late registration.

For its part, the coding process consists of granting predetermined numerical values to all the information obtained directly from the birth certificate and which the UED transforms into variables. This is done simultaneously with fingering.

The coding is carried out with the following variables: province, canton and district of occurrence of the birth, residence of the mother and registration of the birth; hospital institution or place where the birth occurred; the nationality and country of origin of the mother and father and the occupation of the mother and father.

Digitation: begins with the manual numbering (foliation) of the birth certificates. Once numbered, the information is entered by means of programmed data entry in Visual Basic 6 and Visual Studio.NET and SQL Server 2008 databases.

Control tabulations: At this stage, tabulations are made with control crosses to validate the relationship between variables. For example: a birth weight less than 500 grams with a gestational age greater than 35 weeks of pregnancy; or an occupation classified in the highest group with a very low education level, or a minor mother with a large number of children.

Tabulated for use by the Information Center: All the procedure described above is carried out periodically, once the revised and corrected information for one semester is available, through the coordination of the UED, we proceed to Send a note to the coordinator of the Statistical Information and Dissemination Services Area (ASIDE), so that she can proceed to print the tables found on the intranet and thus make them available to the public at the Information Center.

Publications: The publications that are made from this statistic are:

• Vital Statistics, an annual compendium that includes, in addition to birth statistics, death, marriage and population statistics
• Demographic Panorama Bulletin, annually
• Infant Mortality Bulletin, biannual and annual
• Monthly Interannual Infant Mortality Rate.

OTHER PROCESSING

To obtain the information on birth statistics, a tripartite form has been established. The original is sent to the registration section of the Civil Registry, the first copy is for the INEC and the second copy is for the relatives who declare the birth.

The places where declarations of birth are generally made are:

• Hospitals and clinics of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) and private.
• At the central or regional offices of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

For the coding of information from birth certificates, it is necessary to use universal codes to facilitate the national and international comparability of the statistics that arise from their processing. In the UED, four manuals are mainly used:

Administrative Territorial Division (DTA): is an internal manual of the Unit; It is used to code the province, canton and district. Classification of occupations of Costa Rica (COCR 2011): from here the codes for the occupation of the deceased person are obtained. Hospital institution codes: list to code the place or institution where the death occurred. It is an internal list, typical of the Unit. Country codes: list of codes according to ISO 3166-1 to determine the country and nationality of the deceased person.

It should be noted that as of 2014 an update of the occupation manual began to be used, which is an adaptation of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) of the International Labor Organization (ILO). This update was carried out in order to adapt the national classifier according to the current classification criteria implemented by the International Conference of Labor Statisticians of the ILO, which recommends collecting and processing statistics classified by occupation; each country should try to compile data that can be converted to the ISCO-08 system to facilitate the use and international comparison of occupations.

All the manuals used in the UED can be consulted in the "reference materials" section.