Is Swaziland census data suitable for fertility measurement?

Garikayi G. B. Chemhaka, University of the Witwatersrand and University of Swaziland
Clifford O. Odimegwu, University of the Witwatersrand
Eugene Zwane, University of Swaziland
Jeremy Gumbo, University of the Witwatersrand

This study seeks to assess fertility data in Swaziland based on 1976, 1986, 1997 and 2007 censuses. By utilizing single year age-sex published raw data, demographic evaluation tools- sex ratio, age ratio, Whipple’s index, and modified Whipple’s index- were used to assess age misreporting for women in the reproductive lifespan, 15-49. Also, reported parity (P) data were evaluated for incorrect reporting of parities using the el-Badry technique. Further, the relational Gompertz model was applied to adjust data on reported current fertility (F). The evidence of age reporting distortions is not too severe, but moderate and therefore fertility estimates in the four censuses of Swaziland cannot be invalidated. The data on parity and current fertility conforms to typical patterns of fertility distributions of African populations. The study concludes that the census data were of reasonable quality for fertility estimation.