The three diagrams from Destatis are quite typical of the handling of data by public agencies. Each diagram only provides partial information, and no two diagrams are directly comparable (time horizon changes; sometimes, they can count to four, sometimes only to three; relative figures can not be compared). If you want to dig deeper, you are always dependent on their goodwill. Hand me a napkin:
- sixteen states
- 10 years (say) with 12 months each
- four birth order buckets
That's 7680 numbers, piece of cake for modern computers.
They can't give you the data because a regional office's fax machine is broken, the municipal fax machine repair department won't come in unless everyone in the office has an up to date covid test, and a junior data entry specialist is working from home so can't tap it into the health department's Lotus Notes database.
On a more serious note, this just illustrates that we won't be able to reliably blame specific proximate causes until we have robust data through the end of 2022, at the very earliest. We already have enough to blame the regime, whatever the mechanism.
The three diagrams from Destatis are quite typical of the handling of data by public agencies. Each diagram only provides partial information, and no two diagrams are directly comparable (time horizon changes; sometimes, they can count to four, sometimes only to three; relative figures can not be compared). If you want to dig deeper, you are always dependent on their goodwill. Hand me a napkin:
- sixteen states
- 10 years (say) with 12 months each
- four birth order buckets
That's 7680 numbers, piece of cake for modern computers.
Yes! It is very frustrating the lack of consistency in formatting, categorisation, and timeframes!
They can't give you the data because a regional office's fax machine is broken, the municipal fax machine repair department won't come in unless everyone in the office has an up to date covid test, and a junior data entry specialist is working from home so can't tap it into the health department's Lotus Notes database.
On a more serious note, this just illustrates that we won't be able to reliably blame specific proximate causes until we have robust data through the end of 2022, at the very earliest. We already have enough to blame the regime, whatever the mechanism.
I received monthly breakdowns of live births by birth order.
See my new update post.