Preliminary Programme

In my work producing coding files for the North Atlantic Population Prodject (NAPP) I have found great variation in the five Norwegian censuses from 1801 and up to 1910 in how the information about occupation is presented in the source and how that reflects the result of the coding process. In my presentation I would like to discuss some of that. (Show less)

This paper will describe a project designed to explore automatic record linkage strategies for linking historical vital events records into individual and family histories for the whole of Scotland in the period 1855-2000, and to develop a prototype record linkage algorithm specific to the Scottish data. The data was generated and derived from a one-name study which includes all Scottish birth and marriage certificates carrying the Ormistion surname in the period 1855-1940 and all death certificates carrying the same surname in the period 1855-2000. In addition, it includes the death certificates of women born as Ormistons who changed surnames at marriage. Scottish civil registration provides full names of parents including mother’s maiden surname on marriage, birth and death certificates. Parents’ marriage date and place are also captured at birth registrations. Thus, there is an abundance of overlapping information that may be used to link deaths to births, marriage records of brides and grooms to their birth and death records, and births to the parental marriages and to the births of siblings.

We have adopted a family-based approach to linking individual events, where a combination of the person’s name, year of birth, names of parents, and name of spouse (where applicable) forms the basis of linkage. Families are reconstructed by linking birth records to the parental marriages using a set of identifiers including parental names and their date of marriage. By taking into consideration the combined discriminating powers of these identifiers, greater degrees of assurance can be obtained. The automatic matching was divided into several steps, starting with the exact match. Progressively, more relaxed matches were then carried out and elements of fuzzy matching were employed to handle name variations, errors in dates and ages and transcription errors. Using the manual family reconstructions as the ‘gold standard’, the accuracy of automated linkage algorithm was estimated. Sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) for birth-death links were 85% and 98% respectively. Sensitivity and PPV for birth-marriage links were 92% and 100% respectively. Sensitivity and PPV for marriage-death links were 75% and 100% respectively. Sensitivity and PPV for birth-parental marriage links were 98% and 100% respectively. Further research will focus on testing the linkage algorithm and refining the linkage strategy using a larger dataset including a name pool. (Show less)

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the socioeconomic aspects of reproduction during the first demographic transition. While most previous work on historical fertility decline has been macro-oriented, using aggregate data to examine economic correlates of demographic behavior at regional or national levels, much less has been done using micro data, and specifically looking at behavioral differentials among social groups. In this paper we look at the impact of socioeconomic status on net fertility (surviving children) during fertility transition in five Northern American and European Countries (Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the USA). Micro-level census data covering the entire population in 1900 will be used. The data contain information on number of children by age, occupation of the mother and father, place of residence and household context. Coding occupations in HISCO and classifying them into a social class scheme (SOCPO) enables us to study the impact of socioeconomic status on number of children under 5, controlling for spatial variations in social stratification. (Show less)

The Swedish censuses of 1890 and 1900 are now on its way of being released and made available for research within a collaborative project SweCens. The Swedish 1890 census already exist in digitized form but the available data needs to be standardized and coded in the same way as the other NAPP (North Atlantic Population Project) censuses. In 2008 the 1900 Swedish census was successfully prepared and delivered to the MPC (Minnesota Population Center) and included in NAPP. The SweCens project encodes the Swedish 1890 census using the same IPUMS encoding principles. This will make both Swedish censuses compatible with other censuses that are available through NAPP and IPUMS.
Much would be gained for research if censuses could be linked with each other. The MPC has been working with record linkage of the US censuses. Similar work has also been done in Canada and Norway. The SweCens project build on the results achieved in these earlier research projects. The record linkage methods developed at the MPC are primarily based on data from the US censuses. Depending on method, the success rate is often around 25-35% to find the same person in two different censuses. Consequently, a lot of people disappear. The Swedish, and also the Norwegian, census information differ in many important ways from the US data. By linking the Swedish censuses of 1890 and 1900 with parish records in POPUM, the historical population database, at the Demographic Data Base (DDB) we will test and evaluate record linking programs and apply different rules, for instance how to weigh names and geographical places. Since we can follow people individually in the parish records, it is possible to identify gaps (faulty logic and missing biographies) and examine how to best solve the problems of linking individuals in censuses. We will also evaluate how well the Swedish censuses mirror the parish records. (Show less)