P4. Date of birth______
For persons born before 1900, write "98"
For persons who know their date of birth, write the month and the year.
P4) Date of birth
The date of birth allows one to compute the age of the persons, and is therefore a very important piece of information in a census. You must therefore do your best in order to obtain precise information on this matter. Two cases can be found:
1st case: For all persons who have a birth certificate or an identity card with a complete date of birth, ask whether this date is from a proper birth registration or whether it is based on a court decision (jugement supplétif).
If this is a formal birth registration, register the last two digits of the year of birth in the boxes under which is written "year" [année], and the month number in the boxes under which is written "month" [mois].
When it is a court decision, estimate by yourself his or her date of birth with the help of the historical calendar, or with any other method for checking ages (age at first marriage, comparison with other persons of the same age, age of the first child for instance).
2nd case: The person does not have any birth certificate or ID card; then estimate his or her age as rigorously as possible, with the help of the historical calendar and of any other means of estimation, and compute and write the estimated year of birth in the "year" box, with "99" in the months box.
Note: For under-five children, do accept the birth certificates and possibly the health cards. For those whose age is known, but not the date of birth, use the correspondence table that was given to you to estimate the year of birth.