World Widows Report 2016
The Loomba Foundation
Appendix 2 Notes

Notes

	1.	‘LF estimate’ is an estimate of the percentage of widows of the female population of marital age produced by the Loomba Foundation (LF) for the 2010 Study  – note that in the 2010 Study the abbreviation used for Loomba Foundation estimates was ‘Av’, not LF. The LF estimates were produced when no data was available for a country from any source for the percentage of widows of the female marital age population. The estimates were produced by using a sample of up to five other countries from the same region, calculating the average percentage of widows for those countries is calculated and then applying it to the country lacking source data. When producing an estimate for a conflict country, the sample used is of conflict countries with similar profile (insurgency, conventional war, conflict with famine, conflict with major population displacement, including combinations of these characteristics).
	2.	In the 2010 Loomba Foundation global widows report, the terminology employed for ‘Total marital age females’ as used in these tables  was Corresponding female population. Total marital age females means all females (girls and women) at and above a specified age range of marital status (10+, 12+, 13+, 14+, 15+, 16+ and 18+), this group covers all females in the following categories Single, Married, Divorced; Separated; Widowed. Some countries use different categories specifications, but these five are the essential marital status categories. The percentage of widows shown therefore is of the total of this group. We do not use the total female population because it is assumed very few children under the specified age are married. We do not use the whole population (male and female) because the particular issues of widows are better understood in relation to the issues facing women than the population as a whole.
	3.	The quality of data on widow numbers has improved since the 2010 Study, which relied almost exclively on incomplete UN data on marital status. For the present report, availability of the most recent data for each country was checked against the country census websites. When recent census data was not available, a search was made for other available surveys (population, income and expenditure, and social and economic).
	4.	The population data for females (counts of population by age) was taken from the data published online by the UN Population Division using the 2012 Revision. This data is presented in five-year age range cohorts – 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19 etc. When a marital status age range did not coincide – for example when marital age starts are 12+ – the figure was extrapolated by dividing the total by five and allocating pro rata to the required period. To access UN Population Division population data for females, visit http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/ and then select ‘Estimates and Projections’ > ‘Detailed Indicators’ > ‘Population by five year age group and sex’ > ‘Medium variant’ > ‘year: 2015’ (start and end) > ‘country’ > ‘outputs type’.
	5.	Individual country estimates for widows in extreme poverty are not available due to lack of appropriate data for many countries after 2010. Regional estimates used in this report are from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators 2014, and ad hoc estimates using specific country data for North America and for Europe and Russia. See the methodology notes in Appendix 4 for further details.
	6.	Individual country estimates for children of widows have not been calculated.