Low Fertility in China: How Credible are Recent Census Data?

According to census data,the TFR in China was 1.18 in 2010,which activated the discussion of census data quality and the real fertility level in China.It is necessary to figure out how credible are recent census data,especially the fertility data,which are the fundamental index of population and important factor closely related to the public policies.This paper focuses on assessing the fertility data quality in China’s recent censuses and methods of improving it. The household registration data and educational statistics,which are independent of census system,were used to research whether there was underreporting in census data and improve the quality of it.The results suggested there was underreporting in census data, especially in the low-age groups.The data quality of educational statistics is the best because the number of children in the educational statistics has no close relationship with the interest of local governments and reporters,which is quite different from census data.So we combined the tendency of census data and the fertility level of education statistical data to correct the missing reports in the census data both in direct and indirect method to make improvements for the quality of census data,especially the low-age group data.Finally,the estimated TFR after emendation is listed at the end of this paper.