Do imputed education histories provide satisfactory results in fertility analysis in the Western German context?

Demographic Research: Volume 21, Article 6

greater downward bias for the ‘vocational degree’ category might have been expected.
Even though it is quite common in Germany to have more than one vocational degree at
the same level, vocational training spells are generally only two to four years long,
making up only a small proportion of respondents’ total exposure time after they
obtained their first vocational degree. Respondents’ average number of vocational
training spells would have to be quite high in order to substantially raise the extent of
misimputation. It was also quite uncommon to have an incomplete university education
spell after having completed a vocational training spell. In countries where university
entry regulations are more flexible, this source of underestimation of first birth risks for
lower level degree categories may be more relevant.

4.2 University degrees: differences between imputed and original histories

Estimates for the category ‘university degree’ are also quite similar in the imputed and
the original histories (Table 2). Looking at Table A1b in the appendix, however, we can
see that only 85% of the exposure time imputed for the university degree category
actually stems from that category in the original histories. It seems that some people
enroll in vocational training after getting their university degree. This is not registered
in the imputed histories, since the university degree is the highest degree. But this does
not seem to cause any distortions, since a nearly proportionate number of births are
allocated to the ‘university degree’ category along with the extra exposure time.
However, the overall number of events involved is too small to draw any general
conclusions. It is impossible to say on the basis of this data whether first birth risks
really are just as high for people enrolled in vocational training after completing their
university degree as they are for people who have completed their university degrees
and do not subsequently enroll in vocational training.

In contexts where first birth risks actually are lower for those who reenroll, there
might be some potential for distortion if it is very common for people to enroll in
vocational training after having already gaining a university degree. Then, this
enrollment in vocational training would not be registered in the imputed histories
because the university degree is already counted as the highest degree. Another possible
source for distortions in other contexts or for future cohorts would be if many more
people went on to gain degrees at a higher level than a general university degree, for
example a doctoral degree, or if many people obtained a second university degree after
their first.

For the cohort studied here, international bachelor’s and master’s degrees had not
yet been introduced in Germany. This has only occurred very recently. Therefore, for
this cohort, university students generally only received one degree; there were no

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