Playing with matches: An assessment of accuracy in linked historical data

This article evaluates linkage quality achieved by various record linkage techniques used in historical demography. The author creates benchmark, or truth, data by linking the 2005 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Social Security Administration's numeric identification system by social security number. By comparing simulated linkages to the benchmark data, she examines the value added (in terms of number and quality of links) from incorporating text-string comparators, adjusting age, and using a probabilistic matching algorithm. She finds that text-string comparators and probabilistic approaches are useful for increasing the linkage rate, but use of text-string comparators may decrease accuracy in some cases. Overall, probabilistic matching offers the best balance between linkage rates and accuracy.     

Creating the 1831 Canadian Census Database

The 1831 census database is the newest addition to the series of 19th century Canadian census microdata available for social science research, thanks to a collaboration between the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) and FamilySearch. This article presents the work undertaken to prepare this database and the main challenges encountered in the course of this work. While the data extracted from the 1831 census are an invaluable tool for demographic research, particularly on account of the agricultural and industrial questions included in this census, cleaning these data have required particular attention to the age-sex-marital status tallies of the household co-residents. Additional efforts were devoted to integrating missing data for Montréal’s Notre-Dame parish and for other parishes.     

New light on Roman census papyri through semi-automated record linkage

ABSTRACT

The census documents from Roman Egypt form the best documentary source of demographic information for the Roman Empire. Earlier collections (Bagnall and Frier 2006 Bagnall, R. S., and B. W. Frier. 2006. The demography of Roman Egypt. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]; Bagnall, Frier, and Rutherford 1997 Bagnall, R. S., B. W. Frier, and I. C. Rutherford. 1997. The census register P. Oxy. 984: The reverse of Pindar's Paeans. Papyrologica Bruxellensia, Vol. 29. Brussels: Fondation égyptologique Reine Elisabeth. [Google Scholar]) have shown that some individuals and households appear more than once within this body of evidence. This article demonstrates how semi-automated record linkage provides an efficient and systematic way of producing linkages between early historical documentary sources that are fragmentary. The process yielded more linkages with generally high probability values than previously employed linkage-by-hand methods. As the added examples show, semi-automated record linkage also proved to be a useful method to fill gaps in papyri by transferring information from one record to the other. As such, it provides new opportunities for papyrologists and epigraphers working with fragmented materials pertaining to the ancient Greco-Roman world.     

Age heaping patterns in Mosaic data

This paper analyzes the extent and nature of age-misreporting in the Mosaic data, currently one of the largest historical census microdata infrastructures for continental Europe. We use demographic measures known as the age heaping indexes to explore regional, periodic and sex-specific patterns of age misreporting across 115 Mosaic regional datafiles, from Catalonia to Moscow, during Europe's demographic ancien régime and thereafter. The paper's second significant contribution is the comparison of Mosaic-based results to those derived from two other big census data projects—IPUMS and NAPP. Beyond this exploratory data analysis, we also investigate possible sources of variation in age heaping across Mosaic data by examining how it relates to variability in socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental conditions. Overall, our systematic inquiry into quality of age reporting in Mosaic consolidates the project's potentially transformative role in comparative historical family demography and suggests some avenues for future research.     

Testing Methods of Record Linkage on Swedish Censuses

Abstract.

Research benefits a great deal when different kinds of registers can be combined. Record linkage is an important tool for connecting sources to create longitudinal databases of individual data. In this article, researchers test and evaluate different methods of record linkage used when linking two censuses. By comparing the results of the census linkage with other continuous Swedish parish registers, they find that applying constructed name variables and household links considerably increases the success rate without the risk of introducing bias. Missing links are mainly related to name problems, and appear most frequently among children and when the family structure has changed between the censuses. Faulty links are very few and must be regarded as only a marginal problem for analysis. The study underlines the importance of adapting the linkage process to the special characteristics of the sources.     

BOOK REVIEWS

The author considers three methods of counting maternal deaths, and hence of calculating maternal mortality levels, in the nineteenth century. The first method counts maternal deaths classified in contemporary statistical publications. The second method examines nineteenth-century death registers for records of maternal deaths. The third method identifies maternal deaths through family reconstitution. The author finds that each method, in isolation, leads to underestimating maternal mortality levels because maternal deaths were often misregistered or misclassified under nonmaternal causes and were often not associated with live, registered births, as required for family reconstitution.     

Record linkage in the Cape of Good Hope Panel*

Abstract

In this article, we describe the record linkage procedure to create a panel from Cape Colony census returns, or opgaafrolle, for 1787–1828, a dataset of 42,354 household-level observations. Based on a subset of manually linked records, we first evaluate statistical models and deterministic algorithms to best identify and match households over time. By using household-level characteristics in the linking process and near-annual data, we are able to create high-quality links for 84% of the dataset. We compare basic analyses on the linked panel dataset to the original cross-sectional data, evaluate the feasibility of the strategy when linking to supplementary sources, and discuss the scalability of our approach to the full Cape panel.     

The quest for a census of the British Empire c.1840–1940

Regular population censuses are an integral part of the oversight functions of the modern state. Whereas the United Kingdom instituted a decennial enumeration in 1801, it was not extended to the overseas Empire. The administration of the British Empire was decentralised and early nineteenth-century census taking was subject to local initiatives. However, from the 1840s successive Colonial Secretaries considered a unified imperial census necessary to fulfil their oversight functions and demanded the taking of censuses by colonial governments to coincide with that in the United Kingdom. Initial responses were mixed, but with each decade the coverage improved, although no agreement was reached on the questions posed and the classification systems employed. These remained severe drawbacks to the creation of a comprehensive imperial view. Only in 1906 was an official volume entitled Report on the Census of the British Empire published. The experience gained in its preparation, collating the diverse colonial reports prompted the undertaking of a fully coordinated enumeration in 1911. The First World War intervened and prevented publication. Although subsequent attempts were made to revive the concept, little was achieved. The combination of the pursuit of local interests, accentuated by greater political independence, and the lack of adequate resources at the General Register Office in London to coordinate and analyse the results ensured that the quest for a unified census was finally abandoned with the onset of the Second World War.     

Frozen Film and FOSDIC Forms: Restoring the 1960 U.S. Census of Population and Housing

In this article, the authors describe a collaboration of the Minnesota Population Center (MPC), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Archives and Records Administration to restore the lost data from the 1960 Census. The data survived on refrigerated microfilm in a cave in Lenexa, Kansas. The MPC is now converting the data to usable form. Once the restored data are processed, the authors intend to develop three new data sources based on the 1960 census. These data will replace the most inadequate sample in the series of public-use census microdata spanning the years from 1850 to 2000, extend the chronological scope of the public census summary files, and provide a powerful new resource for the Census Bureau and its Research Data Centers.     

20世纪40-50年代美国对中国西藏政策的历史演变

The U.S. policy toward Tibet has always changed in accordance with the U.S. international strategy and the U.S. foreign policy toward China. Before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. admitted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. During the Cold War, due to its anti-communism strategy, the U.S. began to consider recognizing the independence claim of Tibetan separatists, especially after 1959, when the Dalai Lama was exiled abroad. However, the U.S. government has not openly admitted Tibet is an independent country, because, in the light of the historical development of Tibet within China, claims of independence cannot be substantiated and therefore Tibetan separatism cannot win the recognition or support of the majority of countries in the world.     

美国城市旅游

美国城市旅游对我国发展都市旅游有借鉴意义。本介绍了美国在散客旅游方式、旅游交通、城市旅游资源开发、旅游宣传资料以及旅馆业经营方式方面的一些做法。     

美国插手西藏问题历史探源

美国插手西藏问题由来已久,不同时期方式各异.上个世纪之交美国初登世界舞台即对青藏高原表现出浓厚的兴趣;二战期间美国秘密派遣战略情报局人员入藏探险;冷战时期西藏则成为美国对华冷战的重要组成部分,美国的插手直接触动了达赖外逃.所谓"西藏问题"由此产生,并成为当今国际关系中的一个重要议题.     

对日媾和与美菲同盟条约的缔结

冷战之初,面对中国内战局势的变化和美国改变对日政策可能导致的日本重新军国主义化威胁,菲律宾将确保国家安全的希望寄托于美国,积极寻求与之订立"太平洋公约",但该构想不符合当时美国的战略考虑,屡遭拒绝。朝鲜战争的爆发,促使美国加快对日媾和。由于媾和方案在安全和赔偿方面未能满足菲律宾等国需求,遭到反对。为平息盟国不满,美国改变对"太平洋公约"的态度并提出自己的方案,但该方案将日本包括其中,被菲否定。经过博弈,在美国提供正式安全保证的前提下,菲律宾最终接受了媾和方案。