Dual system estimation of census undercount in the presence of matching error - ARCHIVED

Dual system estimation (DSE) has been used since 1950 by the U.S. Bureau of Census for coverage evaluation of the decennial census. In the DSE approach, data from a sample is combined with data from the census to estimate census undercount and overcount. DSE relies upon the assumption that individuals in both the census and the sample can be matched perfectly. The unavoidable mismatches and erroneous nonmatches reduce the accuracy of the DSE. This paper reconsiders the DSE approach by relaxing the perfect matching assumption and proposes models to describe two types of matching errors, false matches of nonmatching cases and false nonmatches of matching cases. Methods for estimating population total and census undercount are presented and illustrated using data from 1986 Los Angeles test census and 1990 Decennial Census.