The quality of constructed family and household relationships in African Census Samples

In African countries, census data provide critical information on current and historical trends in households and family relationships. We use data from IPUMS-International and the African Integrated Census Microdata Series (AICMD), a freely available database of 52 million person records from 13 African countries, from the 1980s through the 2000s. Our paper assesses the quality of the data available in each of these censuses for constructing measures of spouse and parent-child relationship, household structure, and estimates of fertility. We consider the quality of age and sex reporting, as well as missing data. We assess the quality of the links created within African censuses and compare estimates of own child fertility in South Africa with other published estimates. We show that the IPUMS pointers perform well and are especially valuablegiven the complex family and household structure found in many African countries.