[The reliability of birth expectations in the Netherlands]

This study is concerned with the reliability of birth expectations in the Netherlands. The data are from four nationwide surveys: the National Survey on Fertility of 1969, the Netherlands Survey on Fertility and Parenthood Motivation of 1975, and the Netherlands Fertility Surveys of 1977 and 1982. These data permit the reliability of birth expectations data to be evaluated at the aggregate level only. Variations in the reliability of the data among the four surveys, and in the reliability of short- and long-term expectations, are analyzed. The results suggest that "asking for birth expectations in surveys in the Netherlands makes sense in so far that birth expectations can be used in...hypotheses for population forecasts." The precise ways of doing this are currently being studied at the Central Bureau of Statistics. (summary in ENG)