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Abstract
This dissertation describes and justifies a new general procedure for indirectly estimating intercensal age schedules of demographic events (net migration, fertility, nuptiality) from a pair of tabulations of a status of a population (number born elsewhere, average children ever born, proportion ever married), classified by age. The procedure is an extension of an existing technique called iterative intracohort interpolation. It provides a mechanism for incorporating into the procedure information about intercensal variations in the age schedule being estimated. The theoretical justification given for the procedure clarifies the conditions under which correct estimates will be obtained.
The procedure is then used to estimate average annual numbers of foreign born net migrants to the United States, by sex and age, during each of the intercensal decades between 1880 and 1930. The data used are census tabulations of the foreign born white population by sex and single year of age, and counts of the numbers of registered immigrants to the United States by sex and year of entry. This application of the procedure is innovative in that it provides estimates of net migrants by age at migration, instead of within birth cohorts as is done by the more commonly used survival ratio technique. The estimates derived should be of interest to migration specialists and to those interested in the history of immigration to the United States.
