从国际视角看人口普查中低龄儿童的漏报问题

An International Perspective of the Undercount of Young Children in Population Census

文章旨在从国际视角对人口普查中的低龄儿童漏报问题开展考察。文章回顾了世界各国近年人口普查中的数据质量问题,尤其是低龄儿童漏报的情况。世界各国人口普查的实践表明,评价人口普查的数据质量绝非是净漏报率越低越好。每个国家的普查都或多或少存在缺陷,但不能因此而否认人口普查的意义和重要性。人口普查中低龄儿童漏报是许多国家,包括发达国家的普查长期和普遍存在的问题。利用外部数据评估人口普查数据的质量要避免一些陷阱。文章介绍了澳大利亚、美国的人口普查中存在的低龄儿童漏报问题和美国、加拿大统计局针对此问题进行的专题研究和成果。与以往普遍接受的父母在普查中漏报儿童的结论不同,最近的国际研究发现,低龄儿童的漏报更有可能是由于他们和父母一起在普查中漏登或被漏登。文章还从国际视角对国内评估和调整人口普查数据提出一些有益的启示。

To examine the problem of undercount of young children in an international perspective,this paper reviews the experiences of conducting population census by many countries over the world,particularly in terms of data quality and underreporting of young children.The practice indicates that a lower net underreporting does not necessarily lead to a better census data quality.Although no population census can be conducted flawlessly,it is not necessary to devalue the significance of census.The underreporting of young children has long been an issue of population census for many countries,including both developing and developed countries.It has to be very cautious if using external data set to examine the data quality of the census.The paper describes the undercounting if in the Australian and US censuses in some detail,and presents some preliminary but important results from recent studies conducted at the US Census Bureau and Statistics Canada.One important finding is that many parents are omitted together with their children in the census,or they are unintentionally underreporting their children.Some lessons and insights on assessing the quality of census data and making corresponding adjustments for analysis are also offered from an international perspective.