Small Area Estimation and Advances in Demographic Tool Kits for Fertility Analysis: The 4-Parameters Own-Children Method and a Poisson Regression–Based Person-Period Approach

Pedzisai Ndagurwa , University of the Witwatersrand
Clifford O. Odimegwu, University of the Witwatersrand

This study assesses the relative capabilities of the 4-parameter own children method and a person-period approach in estimating fertility rates of small geographical areas. The paper was designed to appraise the Excel toolkit designed by Garenne and McCaa (2017) to implement a 4-parameters Own Children Method and Schoumaker’s (2013) Stata software command tfr2 which implements a Poisson regression-based Person-Period Approach to calculate fertility rates. Using a descriptive approach, analyses were conducted on the 2015 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey, applying the two tools and methods to the estimation of national and subnational fertility rates. Results showed that although both toolkits were relatively strong in small area estimation of fertility, the 4-parameter own-children Excel toolkit was more stable in reconstructing fertility trends of small sample sizes. The study concluded that the 4-parameter own children method can be a reliable reference method for studying fertility trends of small areas.

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 Presented in Session 3. Population, Development, & the Environment; Data & Methods; Applied Demography