Vital Statistics - Assignment Example

Vital statistics are public goods because they help examine the progress of targets related to health (Bemayani et al., 2011). These statistics are crucial in the achievement of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals. They are also public goods because these statistics have both health and legal implication (Bemayani et al., 2011).

A region benefits when the registration of people is done effectively. This is because registration helps to give statistics about the population of a region (Bemayani et al., 2011). This in turn helps in the allocation of resources to the region in relation to population size.

The risks of not making registrations and taking statistics are very serious. Firstly, it hinders the progress of the realization of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (Bemayani et al., 2011). Secondly, the government cannot know and make plans for the people that they are governing. This is very risky because it causes misappropriation of resources. Rural areas, especially in Africa, are at risk of not developing because of a lack of accurate statistics. As mentioned earlier, these vital statistics are very essential in planning.

Populations in Africa and Asia do not have efficient statistics for birth and death. This is because these continents mainly consist of rural areas (Bemayani et al., 2011). This makes the taking of statistics very difficult because most of these regions are inaccessible. Informal registration of people also makes taking statistics very difficult. However, not all areas in these continents are rural. The urban areas have a fairly efficient way of registration hence, providing beneficial statistics. For example, Egypt, a country in Africa, has both urban and rural areas. The urban areas of Cairo and Alexandria have a good organization in the taking of data. According to research done in Egypt, statistics of births are taken in hospitals. Unlike rural areas, most births in urban areas occur in hospitals. Deaths in urban areas are also reported more promptly in urban areas than the rural areas.