Own-Children Method
The own-children method is an indirect technique for estimating age-specific fertility rates for the years preceding a census or survey, using only a single cross-sectional dataset in which children can be linked to their mothers within the same household. By reverse-surviving matched mother-child pairs back through time, it reconstructs annual birth rates and total fertility for roughly the previous 15 years without requiring any vital-registration data on births.
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Sources
- Preston, S. H., Heuveline, P., & Guillot, M. (2001). Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes. Blackwell. ISBN: 9781557864512
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Own-Children Method of Fertility Estimation. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/demography/own-children-method
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
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- Total Fertility RateDemography↔ compare