An Adjustment of Indian Age Data: Some Empirical Approach
Barun Kumar Mukhopadhyay
Abstract
Adjustments of raw age data of Indian censuses are essential because of huge amount of errors. As a result, RG office of India publishes adjusted data based on elaborate techniques at different times (e.g., Chari, 1977, 1974; Jain, 1954 etc.). However, the present work using 5-year raw grouped data is a simple technique under some assumption at two major steps, firstly, cumulation and secondly, fitting polynomials with appropriate degrees.
The adjusted data are found appropriate based on two very essential criteria, i) the goodness of fit with the raw data and ii) smoothness of the series as mentioned by Jaffe (1966). Moreover, the adjusted data depict a close correspondence with the Chari’s (1977) (which was published under the auspices of the Office of the Registrar of India, GOI) adjusted data excepting two sectors, one very early age and very aged persons for whom different techniques are discussed.