Application of the Own-Children Method for estimating fertility by ethnic and religious groups in the UK

Fertility across and within countries is influenced by a number of socio-economic and cultural factors, including ethnicity and potentially religion. However, apart from census data, little information is available, at least in the UK, to estimate fertility rates and thus fertility trends by ethnic and religious groups between censuses. Previously, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) has been exploited to produce national total fertility rates (TFR) by ethnic groups up to 2001 using the reverse-survival Own-Children Method (OCM). Here the LFS–OCM is assessed and refined to improve accuracy and tested against official statistics. The LFS–OCM is compared with results obtained using more straightforward techniques based on Child-Woman Ratios using the same LFS data, and differences are discussed. The refined method is applied to produce recent fertility profiles by ethnic groups, including trends in the TFR and age-specific fertility rates, showing significant and decreasing differences between groups. Furthermore, the method allows us to reliably investigate TFR within one ethnic group by other criteria, as illustrated by differences in the TFR by religious affiliation of Indian women.