Collecting ethnic and racial data in censuses and surveys

Age of the couples is one of the most basic and important information collected in almost all demographic and health surveys. This particular study makes an attempt in exploring the extent of age difference and the change over time among the couples in India. It also analyses the impact of other socio-economic, demographic and cultural factors in explaining the variation in age difference among the couples. The study analyses the age difference among the husbands and wives on the basis of the reporting of the age of the couples by the wives by using a nationally representative sample of the three rounds of National Family Health Survey conducted at three different points of time (1991-92, 1998-99 and 2005-06). The present study uses the data of 257629 (combined data for NFHS-1, NFHS-2 and NFHS-3) currently married women who married only once. It is found that in India the age difference among the couples has decreased over the period of time from 7 years during 1956-60 to 5.2 years during 2001-05.

Focusing on the data of migrants’ religion, this paper provides research-based evidence to explain whether and to what extent such data could be reliable. The explanation is based on population census that also provides unique nation-wide data sources on ‘religious affiliation’. It particularly focuses on a group of migrants in the multiethnic and multicultural context of Australia whose religious affiliation was ‘Islam’ (that is, Muslim migrants) from a comparative perspective. The findings of this study show that while this particular group of migrants are affiliated to the same religion, they contribute overwhelmingly varying socio-demographic and economic characteristics on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds. According to the findings of the present analysis, this paper argues that if migrants belonging to the same category of religious affiliation are studied as a single group without considering their ethnic origins, this will lead to insufficient, incomplete, and misleading knowledge on migrants’ religion.

Fertility transformations observed since the early 1990s and their determinants have been rather thoroughly investigated in Lithuania. There are fairly numerous national and international studies devoted to this topic, mainly based on survey data. However, none of these studies looks into the effect of ethnicity on fertility. It is, to a large extent, caused by limitations of sample survey data. Lithuania is relatively homogeneous by its ethnic composition: Lithuanians constitute more than 80 percent of the total population and the shares of other ethnicities are rather small. This study uses a unique census-linked dataset, based on all records from the 2001 census and all birth records for the period between April 6, 2001 and December 31, 2002. The preliminary findings suggest that ethnicity is an important gradient of fertility in Lithuania. Lithuanians have higher fertility than other ethnic groups, especially Russians. The lowest TFR found in the Russian ethnic group is mainly explained by lower rates of second births. Interestingly, the highest mean age at second birth is also found in the Russian subpopulation. Fertility of Lithuanians remains significantly higher even after controlling for compositional differences by education, urban-rural residence, marital status, and economic activity status.