Here's a few notes that I made before and after the interview, that might be of interest to some readers:
- The Census usually resident population counts mostly reflect what we expected to see, given the historically high net international migration New Zealand has experienced over the period since the 2013 Census.
- The New Zealand population grew by 10.8 percent, or 2.1 percent per year.
- All regions increased in population, and all but two territorial authorities increased in population as well (the exceptions were Buller District and Grey District, both on the West Coast).
- There were a few surprises (to me, at least). Far North District grew by around 9500 people (after decreasing by 100 between 2006 and 2013), and Rotorua District grew by around 6600 people (after decreasing by 600 between 2006 and 2013).
- Wellington City was a surprise to me, because its population increase was about the same as between 2006 and 2013 (+11,800 between 2013 and 2018, compared with +11,500 between 2006 and 2013). All the other main centres grew by a lot more than they did between the previous two Censuses.
- The population of Taupo District is now over 37,000. When does it get to call itself a city?
- The number of people reporting Maori ethnicity grew at a faster rate (+29.6%) than the number of people reporting Pacific ethnicity (+29.0%). That probably reflects a lot of Maori migrating back from Australia in this period.
- The number of people reporting Asian ethnicity (708,000) has almost caught up with the number of people reporting Maori ethnicity (776,000).
- There were nearly 650 people aged over 100 years old!
For more Census facts, see here or here, or the maps here. The Spinoff summarised some of the more interesting facts here. The New Zealand Herald also ran an interesting story focusing on the religion question:
Destiny Church has less than half the number of members of the often mocked, but clearly more popular, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in New Zealand.
The colander-wearing religious group has 4248 members in New Zealand, according to the latest census data, meaning there are more than double the number of Pastafarians in New Zealand than there are Destiny Church members.If there was any doubt about how valuable the religion question is in the Census, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Jedi (20,409) pretty much put it to rest.
One of the outcomes from the Census data is that the number of electorates in the North Island is set to increase by one, as noted in this New Zealand Herald article. I made a few notes on that as well:
- The number of South Island electorates is fixed at 16 by the electoral act.
- Statistics New Zealand uses the number of people per South Island electorate (after subtracting those on the Maori electoral roll) to work out the number of North Island electorates.
- Because the North Island population grew faster than the South Island population between the last two Censuses, the North Island gains one electorate.
- This doesn't really reduce representation in the South Island, because the total number of MPs is fixed at 120, so one list MP is lost in the next election.
- The Representation Commission determines the electorate boundaries, and then there's a period of public consultation. It had better happen quickly, since the election is next year!
- The likely location of a new electorate is somewhere in the arc from South Auckland, down through the Waikato to Taupo, and east to Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty. That is where the electorates have grown in population the most.
There is more detail about the electorates here, and the mathematical calculations from the 2013 Census are detailed here.
Anyway, there's lots of detail to digest in the 2018 Census data. I'm sure there's much more of interest to be found, and I won't be the only one working with the data for years to come.
If the gaps in the census can be filled with administrative data, there was no need for a census.
ReplyDelete$100 million was spent on the census so it was clearly superior data to alternative sources.
if a data compromise is to be made, that should be a decision for Parliament after a select committee process. It is not satisfactory that those decisions be made by bureaucrats
SOME gaps can be filled, such as counts of population, and inter-regional migration. However, that assumes that the coverage of administrative data is as high or higher than the Census coverage (it seems similar, but the coverages are different, so a combination of the two will work well for some variables). Moreover, some data gaps cannot easily be filled from administrative sources.
DeleteData on ethnicity, for instance, are ok from administrative sources (e.g. Ministry of Health or Ministry of Education), but only at Level 1 of the ethnicity classification. Which means we are left with having to use crazy aggregated categories such as "Asian", which ignore significant and important heterogeneity within the group. This is a point I have made several times over the last few years, including on this blog (see https://sex-drugs-economics.blogspot.com/2019/04/we-count-pitcairn-islanders-in-new.html).
Other data, such as household structure, cannot be obtained from other sources. This is probably the biggest issue from an infrastructure planning perspective, since it isn't just the number of people, but the number of households, that matters.
So, a purely administrative Census is not a good solution for all of our data needs.
Some very good points.
DeleteOne of the things we need to know is why some other countries stopped collecting census data.
If the reason is people to stop cooperating in filling out the forms, that should be made public for the parliament to decide that it is time to give up
No major countries have 'stopped collecting Census data', but countries have adopted different methods.
DeleteSome countries do run a purely administrative Census. However, that seems to work well only if the country has a population register and an associated national identification number system. Introducing those things doesn't seem politically feasible in New Zealand right now.
Others run a system similar to what StatsNZ ended up using this time - a hybrid of survey and administrative data. Others run the traditional paper-based Census.
Some countries try to get complete coverage in a single day (like NZ), while others run a partial survey each year, with hopes to cover the whole country over a (e.g. ten-year) period. The American Community Survey is an example of the latter type. Others use a hybrid of both of those approaches (e.g. France).
There was a useful article on N-IUSSP just last week that outlines what various European countries are doing in the next (2020) Census cycle:
http://www.niussp.org/article/modernizing-the-census-in-europe-traditional-and-new-methods-for-the-2020/