Reliability in wife's reporting of husband's education: Evidence from a large scale survey in India

Age and education are two most basic and important information collected in almost all demographic and health surveys. Most of the demographic researches on fertility, reproductive health and contraception focus on females of particular age group especially who are in their reproductive period. Important demographic indicators like fertility, contraception and mortality are estimated on the basis of reporting of the eligible female respondent. The available literature on the concordance and discordance of the reporting of age and education between husband and wife is scanty. Hence, this particular study makes an attempt in exploring the degree of matching and mismatching in reporting of the education of the husbands by the wives in India. The present study analyses the concordance and discordance of the reporting of the husband's education by the wife and by the husband himself separately by using a nationally representative sample size of 42185 couples. It is found that in India among 23 percent of the couples, there is mismatch in reporting of husband's age as reported by the wife and the husband himself.