Birth underregistration in the constituent counties of England and Wales: 1841-1910.

Abstract It is well known that the early official vital registration data for England and Wales are not complete. Estimates are available of the magnitude of under-registration of births for England and Wales as a whole, but it is highly unlikely that under-registration was uniform over all counties. This paper presents new estimates of the degree of birth under-registration for each of the 45 constituent registration counties of England and Wales from 1841 to 1910. The method employed involves the technique of reverse projection, using a characteristic model life table which is defined for each county by its registered childhood mortality. Adjustments are made for the effects of non-stationarity and net migration. The variation in under-registration across counties is shown to be of considerable magnitude, and a particularly interesting pattern of under-registration and ‘over-registration’ emerges for the counties of the London region.