Age heaping and its discontents: A response to Baten, Benati, and Ferber

This note is a rejoinder to Baten, Benati, and Ferber. We reiterate that, on close inspection, nineteenth-century Italian census data contain a number of anomalies that sit uncomfortably with a straightforward age-heaping-as-numeracy interpretation. In particular, we respond to Baten, Benati, and Ferber on the technical matters they have raised; then we show that our findings are robust to such criticism. Finally, we conclude with some general reflections on age heaping as a numeracy indicator.