ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 critiques the method to correct underreporting of births and fertility rate estimates using the statistics provided by the Ministry of Education. The chapter provides a careful and thorough examination of the hypotheses for fertility rate estimates, as well as the data quality of past researches based on the data from the Ministry of Education. It is found that the statistics provided by the Ministry, just like other survey data, have quality issues. Although it is a useful reference, the statistics provided by the Ministry can’t serve as the gold standard of fertility estimates. In addition, analysis of education data also showed that fertility rates in China in the late 1990s reached a very low level.
