ranges, especially when disaggregating the data further by gender, education or residence.<sup>7</sup> We chose therefore to not implement this adjustment in the analysis for this paper, with the understanding that our estimates for the very high mortality events are likely to be somewhat biased downwards.

A last potential source of bias has to do with the recall nature of the data. Respondents are asked to remember the date at which one (or more) of their siblings died, and relate the siblings’ age at that date. Both of those pieces of information are subject to recall error (as discussed in Obermeyer and others 2010). To assess whether there is any systematic recall bias, we use the fact that many countries have several rounds of data and, therefore, some of the sibling mortality rates from earlier periods can be derived from more than one round of the survey.<sup>8</sup> If the estimated sibling mortality rates were systematically lower or higher the more recent the survey, then this would suggest a problem. Figure 2 illustrates the mortality rates among siblings for the 1975-1979 (top panel) and 1980-1984 (lower panel). The left column shows the sibling mortality estimate based on the first DHS survey conducted after the relevant period (where recall bias should be smallest) and the subsequent DHS survey. The right column compares the first survey to the third survey (if it exists). While in most cases the mortality estimates are not identical, it is hard to discern any systematic pattern.<sup>9</sup> Multivariate analysis confirms this result: a regression of the adult mortality rate on dummy variables for survey round, controlling for country fixed effects and period dummies, yields coefficients that are small and not even close to statistically significant at conventional levels for second and third round estimates of a mortality rate.<sup>10</sup> The mortality estimates we generate based on this approach are derived from the sibling history reports of 850,000 respondent women ages 15-49 (473,000 of which are from SubSaharan Africa). These respondents generate almost 5 million adult mortality reports, that is,

> 7 Indeed, in these smaller sample cells, the size of the adjustment depended almost exclusively on the functional form specified for the estimation of the relationship between the number of surviving and dead siblings. 8 For this discussion, we focus on the mortality of siblings only, and do not include the respondent on the grounds that the reporting on their status is correct (that is, they are alive).

> 9 This is consistent with Obermeyer and others (2010) who find only small, and inconsistent, recall effects. 10 15,54 The regression is:  M t,t+5<sup>= α</sup> 1<sup>+ α</sup> 2<sup>* R</sup> 2<sup>+ α</sup> 3<sup>* R</sup> 3<sup>+ α</sup> 4<sup>* R</sup> 4<sup>+</sup><sup>**P + Z + ε**15,54</sup> t,t+5<sup>where R</sup> 2<sup>, R</sup> 3<sup>, and R</sup> 4<sup>are</sup> dummy variables for survey round, and **P** is a set of period dummy variables (that is, a dummy variable equal to 1 if the mortality estimate is for the period 1980-84, another dummy variable equal to 1 if the mortality estimate is for 1985-89, and so on), and **Z** is a set of country fixed effects.  The coefficients on α2, α3, and α4 are -0.0025, -0.0001, and -0.0059 respectively with corresponding p-values of 0.255, 0.977, and 0.504.

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