The Case for Parity and Birth‐order Statistics

Abstract

Parity refers to the number of (live) births that a woman (or man) has had. Birth order refers to whether a birth is the first, second, third or higher-order birth of the parent. In the context of low and shifting fertility, parity and birth-order statistics are becoming increasingly important for understanding fertility trends and patterns, for policy, and for carrying out projections of future fertility. In Australia, the main sources of demographic data are birth, death and marriage registers, and the five-yearly national census. Both the birth registers and the census are ideally placed to collect data required to calculate parity and birth-order statistics. However not all Australian states and territories collect or code the necessary information in the birth registers, and the parity question 'For each female, how many babies has she ever had?' is only asked every second census; that is, once every 10 years.In this paper, we outline the importance and uses of parity and birth-order statistics. We discuss the Australian data available at present and their gaps and shortcomings. We then describe the 'gold standard' of parity and birth-order statistics and how Australia can achieve this standard through some minor changes to the data collection process.

Sources of error in reported childlessness in a continuous British household survey

“…However, many vital registration systems do not collect accurate information on the true order of birth. A particular difficulty arises from the growth in the proportion of births outside marriage, which renders obsolete traditional data-collection procedures keyed to order of birth within marriage (Handcock et al 2000;Corr and Kippen 2006;Kreyenfeld et al 2010b). Fertility histories from surveys that record the entire sequence of childbearing have therefore assumed a greater role in documenting change in family-size distributions.…”

The contribution of increases in family benefits to Australia’s early 21st-century fertility increase: An empirical analysis

“…10 Bongaarts and Feeney (1998) and Kohler and Ortega (2002) have proposed methods for adjusting total fertility rates to removing the distorting effects of tempo change. With the absence of nationally accurate and consistent birth order statistics, it is not feasible to use these methods to analyse Australian fertility trends (Corr and Kippen 2006).…”

Non-marital pregnancy and the second demographic transition in Australia in historical perspective

“…It should be noted that, because of the practice historically of Australian birth registration forms (each State and Territory has its own) seeking information only on previous children of the current marriage (Carmichael 1986), and later of the current relationship (Corr and Kippen 2006), some -marital first confinements‖ may actually have been preceded by non-marital births to other men and/or, for women pregnant at remarriage, by marital births to a previous spouse. Despite pressure from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for parity data to reflect all previous children of the mother, the second and third largest States, Victoria and Queensland, continue to resist.…”