On the Possibilities of Predicting Cohort Fertility Measures from Period Fertility Measures: Theory and Empirical Evidence

P. C. Roger Cheng, National Central University, Taiwan

This paper establishes a formal relationship between period and cohort measures, responds to the literature casting doubts on the usefulness of period measures as cohort estimators, and proposes three tempo-adjusted predictors of cohort quantum which are easy to implement. Empirical evidence from 23 European countries, Canada, and the U.S. suggests that our predictors provide satisfactory estimations and outperform some conventional methods in most cases, especially when the observed cohort experience is truncated at very young ages.