Age misreporting and age-selective underenumeration

About this book

Any demographer working with data from developing countries has heard stories about the grey-haired old lady in India (or nigeria, or Peru) who reports that she is absolutely sure she is either 25 or 69 years old. Although age misreporting, in this form and many others, has plagued demographers for centuries, studies that document the estent and nature of such reporting problems are few and far between. In the late 1960s, two books were published that laid the methodological foundations for studying fertility and mortality in populations for which reliable vital statistics are not available.