Press Release ECE/STAT/00/2
Geneva, 7 April 2000
Population censuses in countries with economies in transition:
a test for democracy
An appeal launched by the UN/ECE
Today, the United
States is in the midst of conducting its 2000 population and housing census. Other major
industrialised countries will take their census later this year or sometime next year.
However, many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia whose economies are in
transition have had to postpone their census largely because they do not have sufficient
funds to finance it.
"Without a Census, all references to
macro-economic aggregates, such as GDP, or per capita GDP, saving, inflation, employment,
indebtedness, poverty, etc. are going to be affected by undercounting or overestimation of
population aggregates, thereby undermining the quality and credibility of policy and
business decisions," says Mr. Paolo Garonna,
Director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) Statistical
Division. "I would therefore like to launch an appeal to all interested parties at
the national and international level to support in all possible ways the conduct of the
census in countries in transition."
"Censuses confront governments and
the public, not only with funding and technical problems, censuses are also tests for
democracy", adds Mr. Garonna. In the past, be it in the United States or in Europe,
there have been cases where censuses were used for political reasons: to track down
citizens of Japanese origin or Jews during the war. In the past, in most centrally planned
economy countries censuses were also used for political reasons. In many countries, there
is therefore a fear among the public that these data might be used against people.
"The major problem is of ethical nature. Countries in transition need to adopt strict
standards of integrity and statistical confidentiality, which was not always the case in
the past," says Mr. Garonna.
Even if funds would be available the task
would not be an easy one, as the situation in countries whose economies are in transition
is very different from the one encountered in most developed market economies. If there is
a register in these countries, it is often outdated and unreliable. Moreover, these
countries have had scarce experience in developing integrated statistical systems, based
on effective interaction between central and local authorities. They lack experience in
the relationship between the administrative and the statistical use of public information,
in the use of sampling frames, in the public dissemination of statistics and the adoption
of modern techniques of data collection and data processing.
Many of the countries in transition have
had dramatic changes in their population in recent years due to internal and international
migration, and changes in fertility and mortality. There is therefore a need to build a
modern public administration with advanced standards of statistical capacity and
integrity; a need to rebuild the public confidence in statistics, as part of their social
capital of trust in democratic and accountable institutions and a need to understand the
social cultural and ethnic compositions of local and national populations as a
contribution to tolerance and social cohesion. "It has, however, to be noted"
stresses Mr. Garonna, "that some governments are afraid, for political reasons to
measure the ethnic composition of their population." But in all cases all governments
have a pressing need to launch or review the major social and household surveys, like the
labour force survey or the household budget survey, which provide the basis for
strengthening their national accounts, the measurement of inflation and government
finance.
While international funding can
undoubtedly be of help, it must be recognised that the bulk of financial support for the
census must be provided by national sources, as it is the country itself, which is the
primary beneficiary of the census data. "However, an international framework can be
particularly important for ensuring the contribution of Censuses to statistical capacity
building and to the reform of public administration, as an essential component of
democratisation, of the promotion of human rights and of cohesive and tolerant
multicultural societies," concludes Mr. Garonna.
For further information, please
contact:
Mr. Paolo Garonna, Director
Statistical Division
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
(UN/ECE)
Palais des Nations
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Telephone: (+41 22) 917 41 44
Fax:
(+41
22) 907 00 40
Email: [email protected]
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