Estonia submits the final report of the population census to Eurostat

Photo: Rahvaloendus

In March 2014, the Member States of the European Union will finalise the 2010/2011 census round of the Population and Housing Census and submit the final report of the census to Eurostat.

The final report, which the Member States are to submit, is an overview of the census program and the census process, containing the description of the census, an overview of census data and their quality indicators (timeliness, accuracy, comparability with previous censuses, etc.) and census results. Eurostat publishes the countries’ census results on its website in May 2014.

Estonia’s eleventh population census took place from 31 December 2011 until 31 March 2012. Preparations for the census were started in 2008 and the publication of results ended in 2014. In these seven years, nearly 2700 people across Estonia participated in the census works. “The data that were collected could fill about 90 encyclopaedias, there is now a thorough and a very detailed database for analysing the society, and numerous analyses have already been made based on the results,” noted Diana Beltadze, Project Manager at Statistics Estonia. “It is also of great value that, as a result of the census, Estonia now has census data that are linked with spatial data,” she added.

“At the moment, preparations are already being made for the 2020/2021 register-based census or REGREL,” Beltadze explained. “As part of the preparatory works, Statistics Estonia revised the under-coverage of the last two censuses based on the data of the 2011 census and various registers, and adjusted the population figures for the intercensal period of 2000–2013,” she noted. Statistics Estonia uses the universal interviewing software designed for data collection in the 2011 census also for holding other personal surveys. The specifically developed data processing software is used for all statistical activities, including the 2020/2021 register-based population census.

Over the 7-year span from the start of the census preparations in 2008 to the completion of publishing the results in 2014, the cost of the 2011 Population and Housing Census in Estonia finally amounted to 13.6 million euros. 59% of the total sum was spent in the year when the census was held (2012). The cost of the Estonian population census per inhabitant was 10 euros and 28 cents (the estimation is based on the adjusted population number as at 1 January 2012: 1,325,215).

Cost of the 2011 Population and Housing Census, 2008–2014

Year	Euros	Share in   total sum, %
2008	376 123	2,8
2009	754 161	5,5
2010	657 901	4,8
2011	3 053 381	22,4
2012 (census moment 31.12.2011)	8 030 966	59,0
2013	552 587	4,1
2014	194 623	1,4
TOTAL	13 619 742	100,0