The use of a new indirect method to estimate ethnic-group fertility rates for subnational projections for England

To project the ethnic-group populations of local authorities in England to 2051, estimates of ethnic-specific fertility rates were needed. In the absence of ethnic information on birth records, we developed indirect estimation methods that use a combination of vital statistics, the census (both microdata and aggregate tables), and survey data (Labour Force Survey). We estimated age-specific and total fertility rates successively for five broad ethnic groups encompassed by all data-sets, and for eight ethnic groups encompassed by the 1991 and 2001 Censuses for England. We then used census data to disaggregate the estimates to the 16 ethnic groups required for the subnational projections and the Hadwiger function to estimate single-year-of-age estimates. We estimated the uncertainty around the fertility estimates and used a logistic model to project rates to 2021, after which we assumed rates would remain constant.