The big question: How many of us will really miss the census?
There have been censuses for millennia. The Christmas story has a census angle. I work with stats so the idea of departing from this most important national log of our life fills me with real sadness. Lets hope that something costing half of the money paid out on footballers this week is not abandoned. This article tells us:
Such is the rigour of the census that even Queen Victoria was required to add her name – listing her occupation as “the Queen”. But after more than 200 years the decennial stocktake of the nation is undergoing a radical overhaul and concern is growing at the impact any changes will have on swathes of policy-making.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) will this month begin a three-month public consultation, including a roadshow to gather the views of interested parties from local government number-crunchers to genealogists, on moves to replace the current census model with a cheaper alternative.
Prior to the last nationwide survey to fill in Britain’s demographic blanks in 2011 the Government announced its desire to scrap the census, which two years ago cost nearly £500m and employed 35,000 people to go door-to-door collecting forms for the mammoth data collection exercise.
The ONS has said that it wants to change the current model and outlined its two “front-running options” – an internet-based “modernised census” or a rolling annual survey of four per cent of the population supplemented by “administrative data” such as education or health records.