Note prepared by the secretariat
1. The ECE-Eurostat joint work session on population censuses was held in Geneva from 17-19 May 1995. It was attended by Austria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, United Kingdom and United States. Representatives of the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) and of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also attended. The following international organizations were also represented: International Labour Organization (ILO), the Statistical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS STAT) and the Council of Europe.
2. The provisional agenda (Working Paper No. 1) was adopted.
3. Mr. David Pearce (United Kingdom) was elected to co-chair the meeting with the representative of Eurostat (Mr. F. Begeot).
4. Mr. Begeot informed the meeting of the importance of the recommendations to the European Union, as they would form the base for the required output from EU member countries from the 2000 round of censuses.
5. The participants were informed of the new UNDP-financed regional project on social statistics which the Statistical Division is managing. This project is aimed at newly independent states and other countries in transition in the UN/ECE region. They noted that one of the priority fields of work in the project is to assist the newly-independent states and other interested transition countries to plan and organize their next population census, through training courses and other means. They welcomed this development, and agreed that work undertaken in the project would be a valuable complement to the work that the ECE secretariat and Eurostat will be undertaking in the next two years on the preparation of the updated set of recommendations for the 2000 round of censuses.
6. Several key areas where the recommendations for the 1990 round of censuses needed to be modified in order to obtain an updated set of recommendations for the 2000 round of censuses were identified. These are outlined below. The meeting agreed that the complexities of the issues involved in four areas (census methods, geographical characteristics of persons, households and families and economic characteristics of persons) were such that they would require follow-up work, and that this might best be done by small groups of interested countries. An additional specialized informal meeting(s) for one or more of these groups and organized under the auspices of the Conference and/or Eurostat might also need to be convened to deal with the selected topic areas.
7. It was agreed that the section on units, place and time of enumeration should be expanded to deal with "census methods". The text dealing with census methods should make clear that although the recommendations are primarily directed at traditional types of censuses, they are also intended to apply to the growing number of countries in the region that compile data for their census from available administrative registers or collect census data with the support of such registers.
8. It was agreed that the secretariats should approach a small number of interested countries to obtain assistance in drafting text for the new section on census methods.
9. It was agreed that this part of the census recommendations require careful attention to deal with difficulties some countries have encountered with respect to the topics "place of usual residence" and "total population". Examples of problems were the treatment of the homeless population, of young people who have no usual place of residence because they move frequently, and the treatment of issues such as the "legal population" and temporary absences of households or household members for lengthy periods of time (e.g. over one year). It was agreed that the secretariat should approach a small number of interested countries to work with them in developing new text for this area. It was also agreed that the text in this area dealing with temporarily absent persons should be developed by referring to related work underway on the development of a new set of UN recommendations on international migration statistics.
10. This group should also deal with the geographically-oriented topics in the recommendations such as "locality" (paras. 29-34), "place of work" (paras. 113-115) and "urban and rural areas" (paras. 194-199).
11. It was agreed that this part of the census recommendations requires some major changes to reflect the rapid transformations in living arrangements and the emergence of new household and family types. Also, this part requires careful attention to deal with difficulties some countries have encountered in distinguishing clearly between household and family concepts. A clearer distinction between families, private households and institutional households is also required.
12. It was agreed that the secretariats should approach a small number of interested countries to work with them in developing improved text for the sections of the recommendations dealing with households and families and related material connected with marital status (legal and de facto). The group should also pay particular attention to the concepts of household (dwelling concept, housekeeping concept and housekeeping concept linked to kinship relationship), the definition of a child, the definition of institutional households and the definition of reconstituted families. It should also look into the format of the question about relationship to the reference person.
13. The meeting was informed of the work currently underway in the Council of Europe dealing with the statistical treatment in censuses and other sources of various types of minority groups. The Chairman of the Council of Europe's working group concerned with this area offered to have his group review the relevant parts of the 1990 census recommendations and propose improved text that could be considered for inclusion in the recommendations for the 2000 round of censuses.
14. The meeting requested the representatives of the International Labour Office to review the parts of the 1990 recommendations relating to economic characteristics of persons and to propose modifications to them for use in the 2000 round of censuses. In particular, specific attention should focus on the classifications of occupations, economic activity, industry and education, and the appropriate level of these classifications for which the relevant information should be supplied. It was suggested that both Eurostat and a small number of interested countries could assist the ILO in this.
15. It was agreed that the following timetable should be followed in organizing the follow-up work on the preparation of the new set of recommendations for the 2000 round censuses:
16. While recognizing that modifications will be required in a number of important areas, it was agreed that the revisions should be kept to a minimum in order to allow for comparability over time, both nationally and internationally.
17. It was agreed that the publication should be made more systematic and user friendly, by for example keeping all recommendations relating to a particular topic (whether basic or additional) in the same section, by scrutinizing and removing those derived variables which are classifications or tabular categories and by improving the terminology "basic" and "additional" topics ("core" and "non-core" would be a preferable alternative). It was also agreed that material should be added that describes the aims and objectives of the recommendations.
18. The meeting also recommended numerous other changes of a more routine nature that could be made to the recommendations. They are summarized in the annex of this note.
19. The report of the meeting (including the annex) was adopted by the participants at the meeting's closing session on 19 May.
General comments
- Make the recommendations more detailed in some places (e.g. the educational attainment topic) and less detailed in other places (e.g. the socio-economic group topic).
Time of enumeration
- Include a reference to the several day long period of enumeration, and differentiate it from the census reference moment.
Topics for which data are to be collected
- Some derived topics should be excluded because they are only tabulation variables.
- The text relating to each basic topic and its related additional topics should be brought together and presented together in the recommendations
- Para. 12 of the recommendations should include a reference to Eurostat's data needs.
- The "additional" topics are not necessarily of lesser importance or interest (para. 13); they are topics for which international comparability is more difficult to obtain.
Manner of collecting the data
- The text in paras. 15-16 should be transferred to the new section on census methodology.
Place of usual residence
- Add additional references to a person's "legal" residence, and to the treatment of people who consider that they have more than one place of usual residence.
- Introduce a time criterion (related to the work underway on the development of new recommendations on statistics of international migration) to help clarify the definition of usual residence. A time criterion is also needed for determining how "temporarily absent" persons and households should be treated.
Farm and non-farm residence
- Attention was drawn to the fact that the recommendations do not provide a recommended definition for this (and other) additional topics.
Locality and urban-rural
- Several participants recommended that particular consideration needed to be given to these topics with a view to making them clearer and more logical and to improving the text to promote greater international comparability in these areas.
(Legal) marital status
- Several countries suggested that consideration should be given to expanding the classification of marital status (para. 50) to include additional new categories that better reflect the wide range of de facto statuses in the ECE region. Some countries also indicated that they considered that de facto marital status was more important and therefore should be designated as the basic topic.
Country of birth and/or citizenship
- It was agreed that this topic should be separated into two topics as they are not synonymous and one cannot substitute for the other. It was also stressed that to have information on both these topics is important for statistics relating to international migration movements. However, one participant also stressed that neither of these topics should be viewed as a basic topic. Another recommended that consideration be given to identifying refugees, asylum seekers and related types of groups in the census recommendations, even though it is apparent that it may be difficult to identify groups such as these in a census situation.
- It was agreed that consideration should be given to determine whether it would be better to recommend the use of the most recent version of the "standard country or area codes" published by the United Nations or the codes of countries and areas produced by the ISO in para. 56 of the recommendations.
Economic characteristics of persons
- The text in this part of the recommendations needs to be amended to reflect work accomplished in the past decade on ISIC Rev. 3, ISCO 88, the international standard classification of status in employment and the revised system of national accounts.
- Consideration should be given to other changes that could be introduced to the text to deal with additional special groups such as retired persons who work only sporadically and persons on various special types of employment leave (e.g. parental leave)
- It was suggested that consideration be given to more strongly encouraging countries in this region to use the labour force concept. Several countries also stressed the importance of specifying a time limit criterion in the recommendations for use with the labour force concept.
- Several countries also considered that "time worked" should be a basic topic for countries that use the labour force concept.
- There was general agreement that the topic on socio-economic groups was of limited use or interest at the international level and that it should be removed from the core list of internationally recommended topics.
- It was pointed out that the "place of work" variable is of particular importance for many users of the economic activity data at the local level. Information indicating that the place of work is outside the country is particularly important for regions close to international borders, and it is likely to become even more important in the future.
Educational characteristics of persons
- The secretariats should confer with UNESCO to determine to what extent the text in this part of the recommendations will need to be amended to reflect work currently underway on the revision of ISCED. Several participants also stressed the importance of Unesco preparing manuals and other technical materials on measuring and classifying educational attainment in censuses.
Households and families
- The work to be done by the group looking into households and families should also deal with the following issues: characteristics of institutional households; the treatment of grand-parents with grand-children; relations with the housing recommendations; age limit to be used with reference to the household reference person; multi-generation families; the definition of consensual unions; consensual unions with children or lone parent plus cohabitee; the possible revision of the typologies for households and families; size of households; and size of families.
Recommended list of basic ("core"), additional ("non-core") and derived topics
This item was discussed on the basis of Working Paper No. 5. The following conclusions were agreed.
- Include the following on the list of core topics: place of work; de facto marital status; time worked; and possibly means of transport to work.
- Consideration should be given to expanding the list of additional topics to include those proposed by countries in Working Paper No. 5 (e.g. disability and long term illness).
- Topics may need to be added to the list of core and non-core topics depending on the outcome of the UN Statistical Division's work on the classification of disabilities, impairments and handicaps.
- Many points were relevant to household and family statistics, and these will be considered by the proposed Working Group which will review the topic.
Tabulation programme
- It was agreed that the groups referred to in Section III of the body of the report will review the tabulations in their respective areas, and that they will also take into account the data requirements of the European Union.
- There should be a set of key core tables which could be provided quickly from conventional and register-based censuses.
- In general, the work session stressed that it was desirable to have a flexible tabulation programme in order to make it easier to adapt to changing needs of users.
- The secretariats were requested to provide table frames on magnetic media and in a standard format to facilitate the preparations of tables by countries, and their subsequent processing by the secretariats.
- The use of numerous different age distributions should be reviewed.
Other output issues
- The preamble should include an expanded section on dissemination, including experiences in producing and providing microdata.
- The collection and distribution of census questionnaires to ECE countries and interested international organizations should be repeated by the ECE secretariat (it was proposed that each country provide a translation of their census form in English).