Source: United Nations (2015); Latin American Mortality Database (LAMBdA); IPUMS-International, National Population and Housing Censuses.

The summary measures for the region illustrate overall improvements in census coverage among both children and the overall population, even though the undercount of children has remained significantly higher than the overall omission of the population. The weighted average shows that the undercount of young children in Latin American censuses has been around twice as high as the undercount among the population above age 5. The 1950 census round show extremely high omission rates for both groups. The median undercount indicates that half of the censuses carried out in this round missed at least 19.9% of their children and 9.9% of the general population. For the most recent rounds of census, almost 10% of young children are still not being counted, compared with an omission of 4.7% of the remaining age groups.

Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba and Nicaragua are examples of countries with similar omission rates between these two age groups, although at different undercount rate levels. In Costa Rica, except for the 1950 census round, children undercount has been very similar to the overall undercount.

Conversely, in countries such as Haiti, Mexico, Uruguay, Peru and the Dominican Republic, children tend to present much higher undercount rates than the other age groups combined. The average children undercount rate in Mexico during the period under analysis (14.9%) is almost three times the average undercount for the population aged 5 or over (5.2%). In Uruguay, a country with consistent low census undercount rates (less than 3%), the average children undercount is 5.7%.

Discussion and Recommendations

Given the relevance of census data for several purposes, especially for planning and provision of public policies, and the evidence of persistent high children undercount, which represented more than 20% of the total census omission, addressing this issue should be one of the priorities for the 2020 round of census in Latin America.

This would be only possible if the problem is recognized and its causes are better understood. This post has provided enough evidence that this is an important issue, but the existing data do not allow a conclusive assessment of the causes of the problem. Some results presented here are striking and can nonetheless shed some light on this question. The fact that the three countries that presented the smallest differences between the undercount of children and the overall population (Chile, Costa Rica and Cuba) are also countries with longstanding reliable administrative systems supports the theory that reporting to the census could be associated to the culture of registering a child. These countries are also known as paradigms of social consciousness stemming from the interpretation of life and the value ascribed to the health and nutritional status of mothers and children (Horwitz 1987), which could also be related to the value of childhood in these societies, leading to a greater likelihood of reporting the children to the census. Institutional factors may also play an important role. In Cuba, for example, the census and the National Statistical Office are part of a strong network of public institutions that can make the enumeration a greatly valued activity.

A more country-specific analysis should be carried out in order to further explore the most likely causes for children omission in each situation, given cultural, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, in addition to census-taking features.

Addressing the problem of children undercount when this occurs along with the omission of the entire household might require attention to the same recommendations used to achieve an overall satisfactory enumeration, as extensively discussed in the literature on this field, such as in the well-known manuals for census-taking (UNSD 2008).

In cases where the undercount of children typically occurs due to an omission of respondents in properly counted households, additional control measures can be applied. Two recommendations are proposed here as an attempt to minimize this problem in the next census round.

The first one is to include warnings highlighting this issue in the enumerator and supervisor training and manuals. It should be emphasized the fact that children undercount is a common feature in censuses so that they should be aware that people might not report all children living in the household.

The second, and perhaps the most important recommendation, is related to a minor change in the questionnaire design. Censuses normally ask questions like: “How many people were living in this household on mm/dd/yyyy?” or “list all the residents living in this household on mm/dd/yyyy?”. Aware of the differential undercount of specific groups, questionnaires normally have some reminders such as: “please remember to include all children, even newborn babies”. In fact, only three Latin American countries (Costa Rica, Panama and Venezuela) did not include any reminder note about children in their 2010 census round questionnaire**.

However, these reminders in the questionnaire, despite being important, do not seem as effective as we would expect. One of the possible explanations is that these questions and reminders are not mandatory and enumerators are not required (though recommended) to read them.

One way to address this problem is by making the enumerator ask explicitly for the number of children living in the household. This survey technique has been applied, for instance, when asking for children ever born by sex and separating those living in the household to those who are outside the household. This is also the strategy used to improve income reporting, when respondents are asked about income from different sources separately. Censuses in Latin America are mostly based on face-to-face interviews so that the content asked by the enumerator is strictly related to the answers given by the respondents.

Thus, there would be the following questions: i) “How many people aged 5 or over were living in this household on mm/dd/yyyy?” _ _ ii) “How many children under age 5 were living in this household on mm/dd/yyyy? Remember to include newborn babies” _ _ iii) Probing question: “So, there were X people living in this household on mm/dd/yyyy” Yes / No (return to the list of residents to correct information).

Finally, it is worth mentioning that these question should be, obviously, adapted to the specific context where it will be used. Furthermore, as always recommended when there is a change in the questionnaire, field tests should be performed before the final implementation.