Abstract
To project the ethnic-group populations of local authorities in England to 2051, estimates of ethnic-specific fertility rates were needed. In the absence of ethnic information on birth records, we developed indirect estimation methods that use a combination of vital statistics, the census (both microdata and aggregate tables), and survey data (Labour Force Survey). We estimated age-specific and total fertility rates successively for five broad ethnic groups encompassed by all data-sets, and for eight ethnic groups encompassed by the 1991 and 2001 Censuses for England. We then used census data to disaggregate the estimates to the 16 ethnic groups required for the subnational projections and the Hadwiger function to estimate single-year-of-age estimates. We estimated the uncertainty around the fertility estimates and used a logistic model to project rates to 2021, after which we assumed rates would remain constant.
Notes
1 Paul Norman and Philip Rees are at the School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Pia Wohland is at the University of Newcastle.
2 The research reported here was supported by ESRC Research Awards RES-163-25-0032 and RES-189-25-0162. Census data for 1991 and 2001 were obtained via the MIMAS CASWEB facility and the SARs team at the Centre for Census and Survey Research, all supported by ESRC and JISC. The Census, official Mid-Year Estimates, Vital Statistics, and Labour Force Survey data for England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland were provided by Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland, and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. These data are Crown copyright and are reproduced with permission of the Office of Public Sector Information. The authors are grateful for the comments of two anonymous referees.