A general method of correction for age misreporting in census populations

Abstract

The paper provides a general method for estimating age-reporting errors from two consecutive census populations along the lines suggested by Demeny and Shorter (1968). When the true age structures in the two censusses are the same, the general method and the Demeny-Shorter method give identical results. However, the latter method faces increasingly the problem of inconsistency of the results with the underlying assumptions as the disparity between the age structures becomes more and more significant. The present method is more general in the sense that it always gives consistent results irrespective of the populations under consideration. © 1975 Population Association of America.