Sources of Population Statistics

---

Pop­u­la­tion sta­tis­tics inform us about dif­fer­ent sta­tus of fer­til­ity, mor­tal­ity, migra­tion, age, sex mar­i­tal sta­tus, reli­gion, lit­er­acy, lan­guage, occu­pa­tion, etc. The data are use­ful to for­mu­late national plans and poli­cies as well as strate­gies for the devel­op­men­tal activ­i­ties. The dat are also use­ful to project the future need of the pop­u­la­tion. pop­u­la­tion data can be obtained from two sources. They are:

• Pri­mary source: The data col­lected by the state or by renowned orga­ni­za­tions with the help of inter­view or ques­tion­naire are called pri­mary sources. For exam­ple: cen­sus, vital reg­is­tra­tions, sam­ple sur­vey, admin­is­tra­tive records etc.
• Sec­ondary sources: The data col­lected by the help of the pri­mary sources are gen­er­ally called as the sec­ondary sources. For exam­ple: jour­nals, mag­a­zines, indi­vid­u­als, other orga­ni­za­tions etc.

How­ever here we dis­cuss about Cen­sus, Vital reg­is­tra­tion, Sam­ple sur­vey and Admin­is­tra­tive record.

1. Cen­sus

The word“census” is derived from the Greek word “Censere” which means the value or tax. It is defined as the total process of col­lect­ing, com­pil­ing, eval­u­at­ing, ana­lyz­ing and pub­lish­ing demo­graphic, eco­nomic and social data per­tain­ing at a spec­i­fied time to all per­sons in a coun­try or in a well-delimitated part of a coun­try. It is con­ducted by fol­low­ing two methods.

Defacto method:

It is the method of the pop­u­la­tion cen­sus in which the peo­ple are counted on the basis of the tem­po­rary set­tle­ment. It is based on the fixed time and the place. If a day is sup­posed on the day basis of the day, that very day is known as the day cen­sus and if the night is sup­posed of the basis on the night, that very night is known as the night cen­sus. It is very sim­ple and clear method. It does not con­sume much more time. It is also quite prac­ti­ca­ble and reli­able for data col­lec­tion. It is pop­u­lar in the USA. But it misses the vis­i­tors and trav­el­ers. So the data may be unreal. It requires skilled man­power for cor­rect data. It does not review and retest its data so that it shows the error per­cent­age. In case of the night cen­sus, in this method, the peo­ple won’t allow any unknown out­siders at night time to enter into their rooms or homes. So there will not be cor­rect data.

De jure method:

This method is applied for col­lec­tion of data on the basis of per­ma­nent set­tle­ment. This cen­sus must be com­pleted within 2/3 weeks con­sid­er­ing the fixed time base. This period is called as the period of enu­mer­a­tion. As time is enough, there is less error in data. In this method, the col­lected data is revised and retested by the super­vi­sors so that the error per­cent­age can be found out eas­ily. In Nepal, this method was intro­duced in 2009 B.S. But, this method may com­mit mis­take in case of dou­ble counts as there is a longer time period. There is pos­si­bil­ity of count­ing the tem­po­rary peo­ple too. There are also chances of dou­ble counts of the peo­ple those who have more than one house at more than one place.

2. Vital registration

The reg­is­tra­tion of birth, death is called vital reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem. In this sys­tem, vital events are con­sid­ered as birth, death, mar­riage, divorce and migra­tion, United Nations Experts have defined vital reg­is­tra­tion in the fol­low­ing way:

Vital reg­is­tra­tion is a legal reg­is­tra­tion, sta­tis­ti­cal record­ing and report­ing of the occur­rence of vital events which includes live birth, death, foetal death, mis­car­riage, divorce, annul­ment, legal sep­a­ra­tion, and migration.