The new method of the next german population census

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Szenzenstein, Johann

Affiliations: Statistisches Bundesamt, Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 11, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany. Tel.: +49 611 75 2237; Fax: +49 611 75 3977; E-mail: johann.szenzenstein@destatis.de

Abstract: This paper describes the concept of the next population and housing census in Germany (scheduled for 2011) and the main results of large-scale surveys carried out for testing the model of a register-based census in December 2001. The most important element of the new census method is the use of a combination of the two data collection methods: (i) The geographic and demographic characteristics of persons can be drawn from the population registers and the economic characteristics can be obtained from employee registers (which do not cover self-emloyed persons); (ii) As there are no nation-wide registers for buildings and dwellings, the characteristics on dwellings and buildings have to be collected through a postal survey contact of the owners of the buildings/dwellings. Other census characteristics not available from registers (e.g. educational or ecomomic characteristics for self-emloyed persons) have to be collected through a supplementary sample survey. The housing census also provides information on dwellings (name of one or two occupants and the number of occupants) which can be used to link the individual persons stored in the population registers to their dwelling in order to create information on private (dwelling) households. The new census approach will not only reduce census costs significantly – the costs for a traditional census would be about 1 billion euros, while the costs for a widely register-based census are estimated at about 340 million euros – but it will also involve a much smaller response burden on the population than would be imposed by a complete enumeration.

DOI: 10.3233/SJU-2005-22106

Journal: Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 59-71, 2005