Poster session on Demographic methods and data

Time use analysis is important for understanding how individuals divide their time between work, leisure, socialization, domestic chores and caregiving, to name just a few activities. This allows us to explore inequalities between genders, ages and socioeconomic status. But in order to do time use analysis we need to have good data. In the case of Mexico, which collects time use data through pre-coded time-budget surveys, the quality of information seems to decrease with the age of the individuals. In particular, the number of hours that the surveys explain for each individual decrease as age increases. This implies that the surveys, which are designed to capture most daily activities, are not capturing the time use of the elderly adequately. In this paper I use missing data techniques to impute the activities of younger individuals to the elderly, and compare the results with their reports.

Fertility forecasting in the case of Brazil constitutes a great challenge due to the regional heterogeneity of its fertility transition, making the application of the known projection techniques difficult. Thus, the paper presents a methodology that allows to forecast the pattern and level of fertility by defining scenarios for a small geographical unit based on the fertility behavior of the total population. In this case, Brazilian Federate States (BFS) and the whole country as a unit. We use National Household Surveys, Demographic Censuses (2000 and 2010) and vital statistics where data are reliable. We assume that the trend of reproductive behavior outlined for the country as a whole is a transition process to be experienced by all BFS, differing only by the timing it occurs. From this assumption it is possible to identify –using the more recent BFS’ TFR as a first parameter– the timing of its corresponding fertility transition. Then, using interpolation procedures we replicate the national transition experienced by each ASFR. The robustness of this technique is given by the coincidence of the sum of births generated by the FBS’s ASFR and the total births generated by the ASFR defined for the whole country.

This study analyses the experience in Latin America regarding the use of the census question on last live-born child survival. Such question has been included in recent population census with a view of estimating infant mortality. However, it is not always possible to compute all the elements needed to obtain the probability of dying within the first year of life, thus the estimates suffer from some methodological vices that do not offset the costs of introducing a census question.

In this paper, practices across countries that included the question on last live-born child survival in their 2000 and 2010 census are compared, highlighting differences in the question formulation and the scope of the data. The authors estimate infant mortality for those countries having included this question. These estimations are compared to those presented in the publication Child mortality: a database of Latin America since 1960 drafted by ECLAC and UNICEF.

Findings show that figures derived from the census question on last live-born child differ significantly from those published in the ECLAC-UNICEF study for all scenarios and countries analysed. These results show that the use of the question on last live-born child survival in censuses is not performing robustly.

Latin America has tried to cope with ethnicity and race issues since the beginning of the colonization process till current days, therefore, how to collect this information is also a sensible point on census matter. Additionally, different countries build their racial and ethnical identity based on different criteria. From that we built an analysis of the criteria used by the last two Censuses round of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador in South America. For that, initially, census criteria used to represent ethnic and racial categories in those four countries were assembled into a comparative table. Following it were assessed the constitutional and law changes concerning ethnical and racial issue, alongside the social movements/civil society demands for the same period. It made possible seeking the changes on census criteria for ethnic and racial data collection within and among those countries, highlighting the differences on how each country officially deal with their population diversity, as much as the legal disposition and census criteria intertwining changes. The results lead us to the main argument of the text: racial and ethnical data are a product of constitutional disposition reviews motivated by social demands and political relations in a very controversial environment.

A standard methodological assumption in social and demographic surveys is that interviewers should be strangers to respondents. Bias is feared should the interviewer and respondent know each other prior to the interview. We refer to this assumption as the “stranger-interviewer norm” and note that it has never been systematically tested. In order to subject it to scrutiny, we fielded an experimental survey in a town of the Dominican Republic countryside in the summer of 2010. We employed a mix of local and outsider interviewers and hired enough locals to produce an adequate number of “insider” interviews, that is, interviews where interviewer and respondent knew each other. Systematic randomization in our sampling design gives our survey the rigor of an experiment. In this paper we use these data to evaluate how the accuracy of responses varies by the level of familiarity between interviewer and respondent, as we were able to validate a number of survey questions by checking official documents that confirmed (or disconfirmed) respondents’ reports. At the time of this submission our analyses have failed to find support for the stranger-interviewer norm. There is instead some evidence that respondents are more cooperative with interviewers when these are not outsiders.

This paper is borne out of the need to resolve the ever-growing dilemma of census counts in Nigeria. Ever since its independence in 1960, the country has employed and switched between two major methods of census enumeration namely - de jure and de facto, for its census exercises to minimize errors and obtain more dependable data planning and development. The aftermath of each exercise has been marked by allegations based on manipulations by the various sectors. Purposive sampling technique was adopted for the study which targeted societal members knowledgeable about census issues in Nigeria. They include census officials, researchers, academicians and policy makers. What do stakeholders put forward? What measures should be put in place by government to have its citizens become committed to ensuring reliable census results? These and similar issues are what the paper explores and then proposes a more satisfactory approach - which includes consultations at the grassroots among others - that will be agreeable to all and sundry if Nigeria must have accurate population count.

The “post-80s generation” represents the first birth cohort raised since the reforms and the relative liberalization of the economy in 1978. This is also the first only-child generation or having grown up with a limited number of siblings. In my poster I propose to present the life-course matrix (Axinn et Pearce 1999; Belli 2009; Freedman and al. 1988) I developed in order to explore the life-course of 900 members of this generation living in Beijing and some preliminary results.
This matrix is meant to collect retrospective data on the family, school, migration and professional biographies of young adults living in Beijing and born between 1980 and 1985 in order to understand, in a life-course perspective (Giele and Elder, 1998), what impacts have the reforms had on the stages to transition to adulthood in this age cohort and if there is a trend towards an individualization and de-standardization (Yan 2009; Beck 1986; Beck et Beck-Gernsheim 1994; Beck, Giddens et Lash 1994) of the life-course for this generation of young Chinese adults.

One of the Millenium Development Goals (MDG5) is to reduce the maternal mortality ratio in all developing countries by 75% between 1990 and 2015. Progress toward this goal has been documented by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), using similar models to estimate levels and trends in virtually all countries. The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are the principal source of data for the WHO and IHME models. Approximately 120 DHS surveys have included the maternal mortality module, using the direct sisterhood method; all of those surveys will be included. Estimates of adult mortality are also produced from these data, sometimes including information about brothers of the respondent. This will be the first such assessment since 1997, when only 14 surveys had included the module. Several strategies will be used, including comparisons of the reports from related members of the same household and comparisons across successive surveys in the same country. The paper will include recommendations for interpreting the estimates, will discuss potential adjustments (although DHS will continue to publish only unadjusted estimates) and will describe potential implications for the WHO and IHME models.

The quality of the information in household surveys is always of concern to researchers and to policy makers who depend on their results. Although considered the “gold-standard” of household surveys in developing countries, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are not immune to errors in data, either due to respondent mis-reporting, interviewer mis-recording or deliberate falsification. These errors are thought to be more common in surveys where basic data are not known well, such as that of the dating of events and ages.
In quite a few households, more than one respondent is interviewed and many of these consist of mother-daughter pairs. Indeed, in the 2011 Benin DHS, there were 1488 mother-daughter pairs. A relatively unused technique in assessing data quality is to compare the reports of mothers and daughters. Direct comparison of birth dates, age, and educational attainment are available. When a sibling history is asked, the mother’s birth history information can be compared with the daughter’s sibling history to determine omission of births by either mother or daughter by survival status.

Population projection by United Nations assumes past levels of demographic development to continue for a long time and therefore do not consider much of the casual factors, proximate and distal, that might have had different pace of change in the past or will change differently in the future. As an alternative, we have produced a new set of assumptions about the future of fertility, mortality, migration, and (in addition) education in 196 countries of the world. The assumptions are reliant on an argument-based expert’s opinion. These assumptions are used to produce country-specific population projections by age, sex, and education (170 countries). The methodology along with the results of the projection for different demographic indicators will be presented in the paper. We expect that our methodology together with scenarios of educational attainment by age and sex, will yield a different picture of the future evolution of the World population.