This session will explore recent experiences by National Statistics Offices in their Censuses of population and housing. In these countries the Census is the cornerstone of population and social statistics, but the challenges in conducting these data collection exercises are increasing. Declining response rates, increased user needs for more frequent data and the cost of a large-scale enumeration are becoming real barriers to producing robust statistics.

In many countries, improvements in the availability and quality of linked administrative data increasingly provide opportunities to increase the efficiency of the census, reduce the data collection requirement or even as an alternative approach entirely. These offer many benefits such as improved timeliness and reduced costs. However, balanced against those are concerns about the quality and sustainability of supply, the reliance on other government entities which reduces the independence of the statistics office, the ethics of re-using data not collected for statistical purposes and the impact on topics and variables not well covered within administrative data.

So, what should the National Statistics Offices do to meet the challenge? Should they stick to the traditional census model, move away from it completely or evolve their approach to some kind of hybrid model? The speakers in the session will describe the challenges their recent censuses have faced and the context within their countries, and then outline how they are planning to support the production of population and social statistics in the future.