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Combining registration-system and survey data to estimate birth probabilities

  • Measurement and Error
  • Published:
Demography

Abstract

With the widespread availability of event-history data, demographers have increasingly eschewed registration-system data in favor of survey data. We propose instead using survey and registration-system data in combination, via a constrained maximum-likelihood framework for demographic hazard modeling. As an application, we combine panel survey data and birth registration data to estimate annual birth probabilities by parity. The general fertility rate obtained from registration-system data constrains the weighted sum of parity-specific birth probabilities. The variances about the parity-specific birth probabilities are halved when registration-system data are used to constrain the estimates. Other demographic applications are discussed.

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Additional information

Leverhulme Trust Grant F/353/G, from NICHD Grant R-01-HD34484-01A1, and from NICHD Center Grant P-30-HD-29263 is gratefully acknowledged. The British Household Panel Survey data used in this article were made available through the Data Archive, and originally were collected by the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change at the University of Essex. Neither the original collectors of the data nor the Data Archive bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1999 annual meetings of the Population Association of America, and benefited from comments received there and from two anonymous reviewers.

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Handcock, M.S., Huovilainen, S.M. & Rendall, M.S. Combining registration-system and survey data to estimate birth probabilities. Demography 37, 187–192 (2000). https://doi.org/10.2307/2648120

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