IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cmh/wpaper/46.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reconstructing Birth Histories using Linked Household Data and the 1911 Census Fertility Survey

Author

Abstract

Complete birth histories which allow analysis of mother’s age at birth and birth intervals by parity are rare in historical data. Partial birth histories can be obtained from retrospective fertility surveys and census data which record the numbers of children ever born, children deceased, and the ages of surviving coresident children. Luther and Cho (1988) proposed a method for reconstructing complete birth histories by imputing ages for deceased and non-coresident children, and Hacker (2020) extended this method to historical census data with adjusted, group-specific inputs. This paper adapts the reconstruction method to a sample of the 1911 census of England and Wales and describes the contribution of record linking between censuses from 1881 onwards to reduce the number of missing observations in the partial birth histories. Record linking particularly addresses concerns about uncertainty in estimating age-specific fertility for women whose children were born more than fifteen years before the survey date.

Suggested Citation

  • Emma Diduch, 2025. "Reconstructing Birth Histories using Linked Household Data and the 1911 Census Fertility Survey," Working Papers 46, Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge, revised 22 May 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:cmh:wpaper:46
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/0e6098d6-2e48-475f-9280-7547ba8bdfe4/download
    File Function: None.
    Download Restriction: None.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ran Abramitzky & Leah Boustan & Katherine Eriksson & James Feigenbaum & Santiago Pérez, 2021. "Automated Linking of Historical Data," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 865-918, September.
    2. Alice Reid & Hannaliis Jaadla & Eilidh Garrett & Kevin Schürer, 2020. "Adapting the Own Children Method to allow comparison of fertility between populations with different marriage regimes," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 74(2), pages 197-218, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chan, Jeff, 2024. "The long-run effects of childhood exposure to market access shocks: Evidence from the US railroad network expansion," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    2. Collins, William J. & Zimran, Ariell, 2025. "World War II service and the GI Bill: New evidence on selection and veterans’ outcomes from linked census records," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    3. Ariadna Jou & Tommy Morgan, 2025. "Do Relief Programs Compensate For Longevity Losses From Reccesions? Evidence From The Great Depression And The New Deal," Working Papers wp562, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    4. Juliana Jaramillo-Echeverri, 2024. "Understanding the relationship between women’s education and fertility decline: Evidence from Colombia," Cuadernos de Historia Económica 63, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    5. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Gobillon, Laurent & Zylberberg, Yanos, 2022. "Urban economics in a historical perspective: Recovering data with machine learning," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    6. Chen, Shuo & Xie, Bin, 2024. "Institutional discrimination and assimilation: Evidence from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    7. Julius Koschnick, 2025. "Teacher-directed scientific change:The case of the English Scientific Revolution," Working Papers 0274, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    8. Davide Cantoni & Noam Yuchtman, 2020. "Historical Natural Experiments: Bridging Economics and Economic History," NBER Working Papers 26754, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Escamilla-Guerrero, David & Kosack, Edward & Ward, Zachary, 2021. "Life after crossing the border: Assimilation during the first Mexican mass migration," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    10. Anna Aizer & Gabrielle Grafton & Santiago Pérez, 2025. "Daughters as Safety Net? Family Responses to Parental Employment Shocks: Evidence from Alcohol Prohibition," NBER Working Papers 33346, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Dahl, Christian M. & Johansen, Torben S.D. & Sørensen, Emil N. & Wittrock, Simon, 2023. "HANA: A handwritten name database for offline handwritten text recognition," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    12. Abramitzky, Ran & Boustan, Leah & Catron, Peter & Connor, Dylan & Voigt, Rob, 2021. "Refugees without Assistance: English-Language Attainment and Economic Outcomes in the Early Twentieth Century," SocArXiv 429jp, Center for Open Science.
    13. Berger, Thor & Engzell, Per & Eriksson, Björn & Molinder, Jakob, 2023. "Social Mobility in Sweden before the Welfare State," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 431-463, June.
    14. Zachary Ward, 2023. "Intergenerational Mobility in American History: Accounting for Race and Measurement Error," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(12), pages 3213-3248, December.
    15. Dupraz, Yannick & Simson, Rebecca, 2024. "Elite persistence in Sierra Leone: What can names tell us?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    16. Ran Abramitzky & Leah Platt Boustan & Dylan Connor, 2020. "Leaving the Enclave: Historical Evidence on Immigrant Mobility from the Industrial Removal Office," Working Papers 2020-35, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    17. Baker, Richard B. & Blanchette, John & Eriksson, Katherine, 2020. "Long-Run Impacts of Agricultural Shocks on Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Boll Weevil," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(1), pages 136-174, March.
    18. Breen, Casey & Osborne, Maria, 2022. "An Assessment of CenSoc Match Quality," SocArXiv bj5md, Center for Open Science.
    19. Marchingiglio, Riccardo & Poyker, Mikhail, 2024. "The Economics of Gender-Specific Minimum Wage Legislation," IZA Discussion Papers 17016, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Cavit Baran & Eric Chyn & Bryan A. Stuart, 2024. "The Great Migration and Educational Opportunity," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 354-398, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cmh:wpaper:46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Guillaume Proffit or Alexis Litvine (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dhcamuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.