United Nations Expert Group Meeting on evaluation of vital statistics data from civil registration

We perform an analysis of the main sources of data used to estimate fertility schedules in developing countries, giving special attention to the Latin American countries. In addition to the brief history of distinguished data sources, taking Brazil as a case study, we present some indirect demographic methods, commonly used to assess the quality of data and indirectly estimate fertility. From all the methods used, the Synthetic Relational Gompertz model appeared to give the most robust estimates of fertility, independent of the data source considered. Nevertheless, we conclude that different demographic data sources and methods have assumption that generates different estimates of fertility. We argue that this might be an obstacle to progress in the path to high quality birth records in the region. Preliminary draft Comments are welcome We would like to thank Tomas Sobotka and Krystof Zeman for all the help, assistance and tips with the paper editing. 2 Assistant Professor at the College of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and research scientist at the Population Studies Center (NEPO). 3Associate Professor at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.