How Reliable Is Fertility Data in Africa?

Duke Mwedzi, Cornell University

Timely and accurate understandings of fertility behaviour are crucial for monitoring improvement of socioeconomic conditions in low-income countries, but the data remain poor in many African countries. Innovative research techniques have been devised to circumvent data challenges, but there has been less focus on the nature of data scarcity and its distribution on the continent. Using the Coefficient of Variation, I calculate the reliability and consistency of fertility data in 44 Sub-Saharan African countries across 16 successive revisions of the World Population Prospects. I then use mixed effects linear models to test whether data reliability varies by colonial history, independence status, and census timing. Preliminary results show that the majority of countries (39 out of 44) meet conventional criteria for data reliability. Results also show a slight reliability premium for Anglophone countries and countries that have passed independence, but these differences are not statistically significant. Overall, the large inconsistencies in fertility estimates appear confined to a few countries in the region.

Keywords: Fertility, Data and Methods, Comparative methods , Census data

See extended abstract.