5 May 2020
Census
of Population and Housing 2021
Background
The Census of Population and
Housing 2021 will be held on Sunday 10 October 2021. The Census is a nationwide
project held every ten years and involves the carrying out of a comprehensive survey
to enumerate all permanent residents in Malta. The 2021 edition will be the
18th in a line of national censuses conducted since 1842. The Census is a
snapshot of the people residing in Malta and the dwelling stock at a point in
time. This point is the aforesaid 10 October 2021, and all data collected will
refer to midnight of 9/10 October. In census terminology this date is called
Census Day/Night.
In October 2019 Mr Etienne
Caruana, Director General of the National Statistics Office, was appointed
Census Officer by the Prime Minister. The Census Officer heads the preparations
for Census 2021 and deals with all pertinent issues. To help him in this
project, the Census Officer appointed Mr Silvan Zammit, Director Data
Capability and Mr Matthew Zerafa, Director Social Statistics, as Deputy Census
Officers.
Scale
Census 2021 will involve
surveying an estimated population of around half a million living in private
households and in about 250 institutional households. The entire population
spread over 68 local councils will be evenly divided into over 1,000
enumeration areas. An enumeration area consists of several streets or parts
thereof in a locality and typically encompasses an average of 220 dwellings.
The enumeration areas will be assigned to about 1,000 field interviewers recruited
purposely for the Census. These will collect the data directly from the
households.
Census 2021 will be marked by
important innovations. In line with both Government and NSO policy in adopting
environment-friendly measures as well as to automate the collection of data,
for the first time, people can opt to fill in the questionnaire through an
online form. The time needed to complete the online questionnaire is approximately
20 minutes for a conventional household of three persons. Another novelty is
that the interviewers visiting the households will record the information in
tablet computers rather than through the traditional paper questionnaire. The
main advantage of this innovation is enhanced information security given that
all collected data will be encrypted so that only authorised Census personnel
with access to a secret key or password can read it. Other advantages are
reduced paper use and more efficiency. Forms will still be printed to cover all
possible exigencies of the households responding to the questionnaire.
The enumeration process this
time round will include geocoding, which involves recording the coordinates of
each dwelling and studying census results based on a 1 km2 grid.
This will allow a geospatial element at the analysis stage, resulting in the compilation
and publication of first-ever geospatial census results by the National
Statistics Office.
A theme characterising Census
2021 is inclusiveness since the census project purports to cover all groups in
the population. The salience of the
theme is reflected in the choice of slogan: “Everyone Matters”. One practical
consideration is to make the questionnaire available in various languages.
Census Questionnaire
The questionnaire aims to
collect key socio-economic information, in line with national legislation -
Census Act 1948
and
EU regulatory requirements -
Regulation (EC) No
763/2008
, as well as the recommendations, concepts and definitions
on population censuses made by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
The EU Regulation currently covers the topics in the attached list. These
topics cover 70 key variables of which 30 focus on housing.
Part of the Census process is a
public consultation on additional themes and questions that could potentially be
included in the Census. This stage is essential to ensure that the needs of
users are carefully considered. Such needs must, however, be balanced by issues
of response burden, cost-effectiveness, data quality and above all, the need to
keep the questionnaire to a reasonable length.
Public Consultation
The National Statistics Office
is launching the public consultation through this communication. Stakeholders
are invited to send their written submissions to email
populationcensus.nso@gov.mt
by Sunday
31 May 2020.
Outcome
A preliminary report featuring
the main demographic variables (among which: sex, age, nationality and
citizenship) will be published in the first quarter of 2022. A detailed
analysis covering all population and housing variables collected in the Census
will be released in thematic publications starting from the last quarter of
2022. As said earlier, the geospatial theme will cut across population, housing
and related social and economic themes.
Attached:
Topics to be covered
in Population and Housing Censuses as per Regulation (EC) No 763/2008
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