Although he was not the first scholar to investigate it, there is little question that the Ph.D. research of Alan Gray, completed in 1983, represented a landmark in the study of Indigenous fertility in Australia. Convinced that ‘Aboriginal’ fertility had fallen rapidly through the 1970s, Gray set out to document and explain the decline. Weaving through a maze of sub-optimal census data he produced a series of age-specific and total fertility rates, refined by three broad geographic location categories, for 5-year periods from 1956–1961 to 1976–1981. These he subsequently updated to also include 1981–1986 and the 10-year period 1986–1996 as new census children-ever-borne data became available. He would doubtless have extended his series further had he lived to do so. For years his fertility estimates were graphed in the annual ABS publication Births Australia as the Bureau began publishing registration-based Indigenous fertility estimates from the late 1990s, but Indigenous birth registration data and fertility estimates based thereon remain to this day problematic in several respects. This paper summarises Alan Gray’s work, extends his Indigenous fertility estimates to the 2011–2016 intercensal period, and examines the results against registration-based estimates that have been subjected to (a) regular retrospective revision (in light of data processing flaws and substantial errors of closure in intercensal Indigenous population increments), and (b) the vagaries of significant late registration, and periodic registry efforts to clear backlogs of unregistered Indigenous births.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚的土著人口：更新艾伦·格雷（Alan Gray）

尽管他不是第一个对此进行研究的学者，但毫无疑问，博士是 艾伦·格雷（Alan Gray）于1983年完成的研究，代表了澳大利亚土著生育力研究的一个里程碑。格雷深信“原住民”的生育率在1970年代迅速下降，因此着手记录并解释下降的趋势。通过迷宫的次优普查数据，他得出了一系列从1956年至1961年至1976年至1981年的5年时间段的特定年龄和总生育率，并按三个广泛的地理位置类别进行了细化。随后，他更新了这些数据，其中还包括1981-1986年和1986-1996年的10年期，因为有了新的人口普查儿童出生数据。如果他还活着的话，他无疑会进一步扩大他的系列。多年来，随着该局开始发布1990年代后期基于登记的土著人口出生率估计值，他的生育率估计值在每年的ABS出版物《澳大利亚出生》中作图，但是迄今为止，在某些方面至今仍存在问题。本文总结了艾伦·格雷的工作，将其原住民生育率估计值扩展到2011-2016年的人口普查期，并根据已经过（a）定期回顾性修订（基于数据处理缺陷和实质性错误）的基于注册的估计值检查了结果（b）重大延迟注册的变化，以及定期进行注册工作以清除积压的未注册土著出生。