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Description

AGE gives age in years as of the person's last birthday prior to or on the day of enumeration.

The Canadian 1881 census provides age in months (AGEMONTH), and birth month (BIRTHMO) for people under one year of age. The 1852 Canadian census reports age in months, weeks, and years, for (AGEMONTH) is also available for the Canadian 1901 census and United States censuses.

Age has been topcoded at 125 in all the NAPP censuses except for the United States samples.

Comparability

Age is fully comparable for all censuses.

Users should also be aware that ages were not reported as precisely in the late-nineteenth-century as they are today.

At this point in time ages were commonly reported as the age at the next birthday, rather than the previous birthday. This occurred in Canada 1852, the 1801 Iceland census and the 1801, 1865, and 1875 Norwegian censuses. For comparability with other NAPP samples, age in these samples has recoded in the integrated variable AGE to report age last birthday. The original recorded ages can be found in the unharmonized variables.

Canadian census microdata for 1871, 1881 and 1901 reveal substantial age heaping which varies by characteristics such as year, province and position in the household. See Lisa Dillon, "Chapter 3: The Expression of Age: Age (mis)reporting in the Canadian and U.S. censuses," in The Construction and Experience of Old Age in Canada and the United States, 1870-1901 (forthcoming).

In Great Britain the precise question on the householder's schedule was: "Age last birthday: for infants under One year, state the age in months, writing 'Under 1 month', '1 month', '2 months', etc" It is clear that this instruction was not followed comprehensively. Ages recorded in this format have been converted into numbers on to the previous complete month, thus 'under 1 month' has been converted to 0; '1 month' to 0.083 etc. Some processing of ages has also occurred, which affects age reporting in this dataset. First, if a persons given relationship is head of household, and marital status is ever-married and the given age is less than or equal to 15 then age is reset to missing. Second, if a person has a relationship to head of household which denotes an occupation, i.e., 'Servant', and the age is given as less than 10 the age is reset to missing. Age heaping is also an issue in the 1881 census.

Age for Mecklenburg 1819 is calculated directly from year of birth. Some people's ages are therefore overestimated by a number of months.

Universe

Availability

• Canada: 1852, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901
• Great Britain: 1851, 1881, 1881
• Iceland: 1801, 1901
• Mecklenburg: 1819
• Norway: 1801, 1865, 1875, 1900
• Sweden: 1900
• United States: 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1880, 1900, 1910