I've found the data you used for charts and reproduced the same chart myself to confirm. It looks like the monthly ABS numbers are junk when comparing them to the totals in the annual report. The annual report has 309,996 as the total for the year. The break down by month adds up to only 273,301. I've tried running my own queries on some…
I've found the data you used for charts and reproduced the same chart myself to confirm. It looks like the monthly ABS numbers are junk when comparing them to the totals in the annual report. The annual report has 309,996 as the total for the year. The break down by month adds up to only 273,301. I've tried running my own queries on some of the other data cubes to see if I could find an indirect way of getting the monthly data or at least a number close to 309,996, but I can't. It looks like the information in some (maybe all) of the data cubes hasn't been updated for nearly a year. The monthly data looks like it's way out of date, for example Victoria with a population of 7 million only has 21 births allocated in December 2021 vs about 6,000 in previous years. I cant find where they got the 309,996 from but it's certainly not from any of the data cubes I looked at. Admittedly, I only spent an hour looking at it, so it may be there but I didn't find it.
If this is the quality of the ABS data cubes I wouldn't read too much into any other analyses either, it may be just as out of date as the births data. GIGO.
P.S. This isn't a reflection on your analysis, I just think the underlying birth data by month from the ABS is garbage. I'm genuinely surprised and disappointed at how out of date it is. I was expecting a consistent and small 3 month lag like the all cause mortality series but this is ridiculous.
I've found the data you used for charts and reproduced the same chart myself to confirm. It looks like the monthly ABS numbers are junk when comparing them to the totals in the annual report. The annual report has 309,996 as the total for the year. The break down by month adds up to only 273,301. I've tried running my own queries on some of the other data cubes to see if I could find an indirect way of getting the monthly data or at least a number close to 309,996, but I can't. It looks like the information in some (maybe all) of the data cubes hasn't been updated for nearly a year. The monthly data looks like it's way out of date, for example Victoria with a population of 7 million only has 21 births allocated in December 2021 vs about 6,000 in previous years. I cant find where they got the 309,996 from but it's certainly not from any of the data cubes I looked at. Admittedly, I only spent an hour looking at it, so it may be there but I didn't find it.
If this is the quality of the ABS data cubes I wouldn't read too much into any other analyses either, it may be just as out of date as the births data. GIGO.
P.S. This isn't a reflection on your analysis, I just think the underlying birth data by month from the ABS is garbage. I'm genuinely surprised and disappointed at how out of date it is. I was expecting a consistent and small 3 month lag like the all cause mortality series but this is ridiculous.