Volume 36 - Article 17 | Pages 525–556  

The quality of periodic fertility measures in EU-SILC

By Angela Greulich, Aurélien Dasré

Abstract

Background: The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) are increasingly used in demographic analysis, due to their large country coverage, the availability of harmonized socioeconomic measures, and the possibility to merge partners. However, so far there exists no comprehensive analysis of the representativeness of the fertility behavior reported by EU-SILC.

Objective: This paper quantifies the quality of periodic fertility measures in EU-SILC.

Methods: We compare periodic fertility measures obtained with EU-SILC to unbiased measures from the Human Fertility Database (HFD) for several European countries, by applying a cross-sectional perspective.

Results: We show that EU-SILC measures of periodic fertility are biased downward, mainly due to attrition, while births of order one for ages 20‒29 are particularly underreported. However, we find no evidence of socioeconomic differentials in attrition.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that for the majority of European countries, EU-SILC can be used for the analysis of childbearing behavior when respecting the measures of precaution mentioned in this article.

Contribution: These precautions contain, for example, applying a retrospective approach and differentiating by rotation groups when calculating aggregate measures of periodic fertility.

Author’s Affiliation

• Angela Greulich - Sciences Po, France EMAIL
• Aurélien Dasré - Université Paris Nanterre, France EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Measuring the educational gradient of period fertility in 28 European countries: A new approach based on parity-specific fertility estimates
Volume 49 - Article 34

The dynamics of the family network during childhood: A genealogical and longitudinal approach to rural Mali
Volume 41 - Article 9

Education, labour, and the demographic consequences of birth postponement in Europe
Volume 36 - Article 23

Multiple imputation for demographic hazard models with left-censored predictor variables: Application to employment duration and fertility in the EU-SILC
Volume 35 - Article 38

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Fertility differences across immigrant generations in the United Kingdom
Volume 52 - Article 33    | Keywords: event history analysis, fertility, immigrant, second generation, United Kingdom

Amish fertility in the United States: Comparative evidence from the American Community Survey and Amish population registries
Volume 52 - Article 26    | Keywords: American Community Survey (ACS), Amish, fertility, natural fertility, total fertility rate (TFR)

Examining the relationships between education, coresidential unions, and the fertility gap by simulating the reproductive life courses of Dutch women
Volume 52 - Article 24    | Keywords: contraception, education, fertility, GGS, life course, LISS, microsimulation, Netherlands, physiology, unions

Job creation, job destruction, and fertility in Germany
Volume 52 - Article 13    | Keywords: fertility, gender, Germany, job creation, job destruction, labor market, spatial modelling, unemployment

The changing inter-relationship between partnership dynamics and fertility trends in Europe and the United States: A review
Volume 52 - Article 7    | Keywords: childbearing, Europe, family complexity, fertility, fertility, marriage, partnership, United States of America