mother_age: Mother's Age at Birth

In Mikuana/vitalstatistics: CDC Vital Statistics Analysis Tools

Description

An integer field which represents the mother's age at time of birth in single year increments.

Details

This field is available for all years, but has undergone significant changes throughout the history of the data set, which requires complex handling. As a result the range of ages that are allowed in the data set change somewhat erratically over time. Additionally, it should be noted that this field is a mixture of self reported (by the mother) data, and imputed data, and there are some some drawbacks to mixing self reported and imputed data.

The first maternal age field named UMAGERPT/DMAGERPT and was collected between 1968 and 2003 with maternal age reported in single years. From 1992 to 2003, this field was largely unpopulated (approximately 98 2002 was used to fill this gap. The DMAGE field is delineated from UMAGERPT/DMAGERPT because the former explicitly acknowledges that missing data will be imputed through the use of date of birth, whereas the latter makes no such explanation in the data dictionaries. In 2003, DMAGE was no longer reported but a recoded value named MAGER41 - which obfuscates births for mothers younger than 15 and older than 50 - became available to fill most of these missing values. MAGER41 lasted only a single year though, and in 2004 a recoded value known as MAGER - which obfuscates births to mothers younger than 13 and older than 50 - was introduced and remains in effect through the end of the data sets.

Value

a integer column

Data Quality Tests

This column is tested for the following quality assumptions prior to packaging:

1. less than 0.2

See Also

births

Other births-column: birth_in_hospital, birth_month_date, birth_state, birth_via_cesarean, birth_weekday_date, child_sex

Mikuana/vitalstatistics documentation built on May 7, 2019, 4:57 p.m.