Working Paper: NBER ID: w1700
Authors: David E. Bloom
Abstract: This paper develops a general procedure for estimating age, period, and cohort effects in demographic data. The procedure involves structuring, mathematically, the effect of cross-cohort changes in the timing and level of a vital event on period rates of occurrence of the event. The procedureis illustrated and tested in an application to data on the first birth rates of American women. Overall, the empirical results provide support for the procedure. The results also provide evidence that period effects are highly age-specific and that the size of cohort effects may be substantially overestimated by models which fail to allow for the age specificity of period effects.
Keywords: age effects; period effects; cohort effects; demographic data; fertility
JEL Codes: J11; J13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Period effects (E32) | Age-specific influences (J11) |
| Age-specific influences (J11) | Variations in demographic rates (J11) |
| Cohort effects (C92) | Overestimation by models not accounting for age-specific period effects (C51) |
| Adjustments for age-specific period effects (J11) | Reduction in standard deviations of cohort estimates (C21) |