Age reporting in Indian Census: an insight

Laxmi Kant Dwivedi, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)
Reshmi R.S., International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Census is a key source of socio-economic and demographic data and is useful for many purposes related to public welfare. A number of vital rates derived from age data depend on the reporting of age. Rate of age not stated is one of the important components to measure the quality of age reporting in the census. The present study tries to explore the levels, trends and differentials in age not stated in India and the major states over the period 1971-2001. It is observed that age non- reporting has increased between 1971-1991 in almost all the states. It shows the declining trend in the year 1991- 2001 but still the figure was high in the year 2001. It may be observed that for census 2001, the quality of data appears to be better, when it is evaluated by the Whipple index but still a lot of scope is there for further improvement.