What is age heaping? Number heaping is a common tendency of humans. What this means is that we tend round numbers to the nearest 5 or 10 (those of us that use the decimal system!). Age heaping is the tendency of innumerate people to round their age to the nearest 5 or 10, presumably because they can't subtract to infer their current age from their birth year and the current year. Psychometrically speaking, this is a very easy mathematical test, so why is it useful? Surely everybody but small children can do it now? Yes. However, in the past, not all adults even in Western countries could do this. One can locate legal documents and tomb stones from these times and analyze the amount of age heaping. The figure below shows an example of age heaping in old Italian data.
What exactly is age heaping and what use is it?
What exactly is age heaping and what use is…
What exactly is age heaping and what use is it?
What is age heaping? Number heaping is a common tendency of humans. What this means is that we tend round numbers to the nearest 5 or 10 (those of us that use the decimal system!). Age heaping is the tendency of innumerate people to round their age to the nearest 5 or 10, presumably because they can't subtract to infer their current age from their birth year and the current year. Psychometrically speaking, this is a very easy mathematical test, so why is it useful? Surely everybody but small children can do it now? Yes. However, in the past, not all adults even in Western countries could do this. One can locate legal documents and tomb stones from these times and analyze the amount of age heaping. The figure below shows an example of age heaping in old Italian data.