Analysing biases in genealogies using demographic microsimulation

Liliana P. Calderón-Bernal, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez and Emilio Zagheni
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Liliana P. Calderón-Bernal: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Diego Alburez-Gutierrez: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Emilio Zagheni: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2023-034, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: An incomplete understanding of biases affecting the representativeness of genealogies has hindered their full exploitation. We report on a series of experiments on synthetic populations designed to assess how structural biases in ascendant genealogies can affect the accuracy of demographic estimates. Using the SOCSIM microsimulation programme and Swedish fertility and mortality data (1751-2022), we analyse three sources of bias: lineage survival, limited coverage of collateral kin and lineage truncation. Comparing demographic measures derived from ‘fully-recorded’ and ‘bias-infused’ synthetic populations, we find that including only direct ancestors leads to an underestimation of total fertility rate (TFR) (c.a. −42%) and an overestimation of life expectancy at birth (e0) (c.a. +33%) over the whole period. However, after including direct ancestors’ offspring, TFR became overestimated (c.a. +21%) while e0 overestimation was limited to +1.8%. Our study shows that the completeness of the family trees is essential for obtaining accurate demographic estimates based on genealogies. Keywords: genealogies, microsimulation, biases, historical demography, kinship

Keywords: genealogy; historical demography; kinship; microsimulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-evo and nep-his
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https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2023-034.pdf (text/html)
https://github.com/liliana-calderon/SOCSIM_Genealogies (text/html)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2023-034

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2023-034

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