Estimating recent fertility from data on own children : West Malaysia, 1958-67

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Vital registration, hence knowledge of fertility, remains notoriously deficient in many nations of the world. However, most nations conduct population censuses and surveys which collect information on young children. The paper presents fairly straightforward but not widely used procedures for utilizing such data for estimating recent fertility. The method is illustrated through estimates of fertility from 1958 through 1967 for West Malaysia. The Malaysian vital statistics appear to be complete on the basis of independent checks, and thus provide useful data for comparison with the fertility estimates based on surveys. The data on own children were obtained from the Socio-Economic Survey conducted by the Malaysian Department of Statistics in 1967-68 based on a sample of 20,000 households. The fertility estimates derived from the survey agree closely with those based on vital statistics. When the total fertility rate is taken as a summary measure, the difference between the two kinds of estimates is very small, never exceeding four percent.The own children method of estimating recent fertility can be a powerful technique in countries where (a) the census or survey data on children's ages are reasonably accurate; (b) most of the young children live with their mothers, and their relationships to the head of the family or household are clear; and (c) recent mortality is relatively low. The own children procedures, if carefully employed, will not only generate good estimates of recent fertility trends but also facilitate studies of differential fertility