And the BBQ
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We already needed a do-over on the census, since the 45 admin screwed up the one they did.
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Yes - a lot of countries will be having similar thoughts. But if you already do a census every 5 years I’m not convinced of the need for an extra.
Carrying out a full population census is a very expensive process. It varies by country, but many censi include questions about a range of properties like religious belief, country of birth, languages spoken and employment status. A lot of these questions are included because if you are going to do a census the marginal cost of including these questions is minimal. Some of these factors, notably employment status, will have changed greatly due to COVID. But most of these factors can be estimated reasonably well and FAR more cheaply by a much smaller sample survey. (I am not a registered demographer, by when I studied a demography subject at university the lecturer expressed this view.) So it’s hard to justify an extra census to update that data.
The thing that the census tells you that smaller surveys can’t is the population count subdivided by location and you can even get a half-decent estimate of that up to about 2 years either side of the census by adjusting the census with data from your registry of births and deaths. And if your last census was 2 years ago, what’s the value of an extra census now when mortality rates are still increasing? Seems more useful to wait until after COVID deaths have peaked and declined again, to get and accurate picture of your new “normal” population structure.
And I stress again, an extra census is expensive. I’m sure we can find better things to spend the money on during this medical crisis. Things that will keep people alive, so that we can count them again at the next normally scheduled census.
Australia just did its 5-yearly Census a month or so ago. Eventually the population data from that census will be combined with the registered deaths for 2020-2022 to produce the next Australian population life table. (Basically a a list of annual mortality rates subdivided by age and sex, and other useful stats derived from those, such as life expectancy by age.) It’s still unclear whether this upcoming life table will show a blip in mortality rates. 2020 deaths were BELOW the expected level. Due to the lockdown, the winter flu cases were well-down on normal, road accidents were also well down and we successfully contained the COVID cases. 2021 is not going nearly as well for New South Wales and Victoria, and we still don’t have a vaccine for the younger kids.
It’s ten years in the US, and it was royally fucked & cut short by the former guy and his cronies.
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Wow. OK. If they’re 10-yearly you could definitely justify an extra one, even if the last one hadn’t been meddled with.
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Population shrank for the first time ever huh? Whatever happened to these guys?
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Also becoming a hazardous job thanks to racists and Q-nuts.
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”shrank” 
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Swear Trek has a GIF for everything in 2020/2021.
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Something also tells me the Civil War probably shrank the population but something something 3/5 compromise screwed the numbers up.
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Um…wrong state.
Their state wildflower is the Oak-leaf Hydrangea. And you know what that implies.
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I was a Census Field Supervisor for the 2020 enumeration effort. None of my people had a gun pulled on them, but there were a few threats, slammed doors, and of course, the inevitable general rudeness. (Some of it wasn’t even from people being interviewed, but from people just walking by on the street.)
It was … interesting. I also live in Kenosha, so for a while there I had to pass along daily updates on locations the enumerators weren’t allowed to visit.
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