Real and synthetic household populations and their analysis: an example of early historical micro-census data

The main purpose of this paper is to report on an initial validation of methods for dealing with micro-census data with no delineated households. After describing the 1819 census of Rostock we test the possibilities of using an algorithm that creates households according to a strictly defined set of rules. The census of 1867 will be taken as our reference point for designing such rules of assigning people to household units and for assessing the appropriateness of the algorithm’s fit to the census of 1819. In the final part we discuss the outcome of the algorithm for different groups within the urban population and the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.