Observing the Number of Children with EU-SILC: A Quantification of Biases

Observer le nombre d'enfants avec les données EU-SILC

Angela Greulich () and Aurélien Dasre ()
Additional contact information
Angela Greulich: INED - Institut national d'études démographiques, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Aurélien Dasre: CRESPPA - Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris - UP8 - Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL

Abstract: Various fields of research increasingly use the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) database because of its large country coverage, the availability of harmonized socioeconomic measures, and the possibility of merging partners. Its measures of the number of children risk being biased, however, because the questionnaire does not directly ask about the number of children ever born to a woman or man, and only those children who live in the parental household are observed. These limitations are problematic not only for demographic but also for socioeconomic analysis because family size and fertility behaviour are important determinants of income and living conditions. To raise awareness of this issue, we analyse the quality of the measure of the number of children in EU-SILC. For ten countries, we first quantify the bias in the reported number of children, distinguishing fertility measures by age and birth order. We then identify the socioeconomic profiles that are most subject to biased measures.

Keywords: Statictics; European Union; Living Conditions; Measurement biases; Fertility; Conditions de vie; Biais de mesure; Fécondité; Statistiques; Union Européenne; Revenus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Population (édition française), 2018, 73 (4), pp.719-755. ⟨10.3917/popu.1804.0719⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-02118485

DOI: 10.3917/popu.1804.0719

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().