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The Quality of Male Fertility Data in Major U.S. Surveys

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Demography

Abstract

Researchers continue to question fathers’ willingness to report their biological children in surveys and the ability of surveys to adequately represent fathers. To address these concerns, this study evaluates the quality of men’s fertility data in the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) and in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Comparing fertility rates in each survey with population rates based on data from Vital Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, we document how the incomplete reporting of births in different surveys varies according to men’s characteristics, including their age, race, marital status, and birth cohort. In addition, we use Monte Carlo simulations based on the NSFG data to demonstrate how birth underreporting biases associations between early parenthood and its antecedents. We find that in the NSFG, roughly four out of five early births were reported; but in the NLSY79 and NLSY97, almost nine-tenths of early births were reported. In all three surveys, incomplete reporting was especially pronounced for nonmarital births. Our results suggest that the quality of male fertility data is strongly linked to survey design and that it has implications for models of early male fertility.

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Notes

  1. Information on marital status in Vital Statistics data has varied across states and over time. The majority of states ask directly whether the mother was married “at birth, conception, or any time in between,” or alternatively, whether she was married to the father of the child. A few states determine marital status using inferential procedures. See Hamilton et al. (2007) and Ventura and Bachrach (2000) for greater detail on how marital status is measured in Vital Statistics.

  2. We also used the hotdeck method to impute missing fathers’ ages. First, we stratified the birth certificate data by calendar year, mother’s age, and father’s race. Then, for each stratum (e.g., births to black fathers and 18-year-old mothers in 1980), we randomly selected ages of fathers reported on birth certificates to fill in the father’s age when it is missing. This alternative method of imputation produced estimates of the number of births to men that are close to those based on multivariate imputation.

  3. To develop comparable measures of race for data from years 2000 and beyond, we bridged the responses of those who reported more than one race to a single race using the largest-group bridging method (NCHS 2004).

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Acknowledgments

This research has been funded by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P01HD045610 and R01HD043472). The Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University and the Population Research Center at The RAND Corporation, which also receive core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, have also supported this research (R24HD050959-01 and R24HD050906, respectively). The authors are indebted to Child Trends for creating the male fertility data from the NLSY79, in addition to Sue Eshleman and Felicia Yang DeLeone for programming help. We also appreciate the comments of participants at the Initiative in Population Research Seminar Series at The Ohio State University and the ongoing feedback from investigators and advisors of the Transition to Fatherhood program project. We would also like to thank Robert Strawderman for statistical advice and Lesley Wadsworth for copy-editing help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, 237 Williams Hall, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA

    Kara Joyner

  2. Center on Labor, Human Services, & Population, Urban Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    H. Elizabeth Peters

  3. Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Kathryn Hynes

  4. Health Promotion, Social & Behavioral Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA

    Asia Sikora

  5. Department of Economics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Jamie Rubenstein Taber

  6. Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Michael S. Rendall

  7. Department of Policy Analysis & Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    H. Elizabeth Peters

  8. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA

    Michael S. Rendall

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  1. Kara Joyner
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Correspondence to Kara Joyner.

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Joyner, K., Peters, H.E., Hynes, K. et al. The Quality of Male Fertility Data in Major U.S. Surveys. Demography 49, 101–124 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0073-9

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