Abstract
ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the extent and nature of age-misreporting in the Mosaic data, currently one of the largest historical census microdata infrastructures for continental Europe. We use demographic measures known as the age heaping indexes to explore regional, periodic and sex-specific patterns of age misreporting across 115 Mosaic regional datafiles, from Catalonia to Moscow, during Europe's demographic ancien régime and thereafter. The paper's second significant contribution is the comparison of Mosaic-based results to those derived from two other big census data projects—IPUMS and NAPP. Beyond this exploratory data analysis, we also investigate possible sources of variation in age heaping across Mosaic data by examining how it relates to variability in socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental conditions. Overall, our systematic inquiry into quality of age reporting in Mosaic consolidates the project's potentially transformative role in comparative historical family demography and suggests some avenues for future research.
Highlights
Thanks to increased availability of big historical census microdata historical demography has recently witnessed unprecedented expansion of its data infrastructure (Ruggles 2012, 2014, 2016; Szo»tysek 2016)
The problems that led to omissions and misreports—e.g., faulty census administration, low levels of education, inaccessible places of residence, reluctance to reveal personal information, and extended enumeration periods—must have been much more severe in the early modern times than they were in modern enumerations (Ruggles and Brower 2003)
We found that Mosaic data split fairly between these of worse and better quality according to contemporary UN criteria, and that a substantial portion of Mosaic regional datasets should not present major obstacles for demographic analysis
Summary
Thanks to increased availability of big historical census microdata historical demography has recently witnessed unprecedented expansion of its data infrastructure (Ruggles 2012, 2014, 2016; Szo»tysek 2016). Drawing upon experiences of a global community of researchers— of giant endeavors such as Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) and the North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP), Mosaic has recently been recognized as one of the most promising historical census microdata initiatives in the field of historical family demography (see Ruggles 2012; 2016, 151). At present, it contains 115 machine-readable harmonized samples of historical census and census-like microdata derived from early national censuses, as well as from a wide range of individual-level population listings of varying provenience. This problem has led demographic historians to pay special attention to the tasks of data assessment and checking, and to consider these practices “the cornerstone of research in historical demography” (Henry 1968; Del Panta et al 2006, 597–598)
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