Nordic Address Forum – Mývatn 2009
Ómar S Harðarson, Demography and census
Hagstofa Íslands
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Little bit of history
The register based census
The key task
Strategies
Some obstacles
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First census in 1703
Then together with Denmark until 1901, after
that every 10 years until 1960
Last traditional census in 1981
No interest to repeat a traditional census
◦ Too much is known from registers
◦ What is unknown is doesn’t justify a full census
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Registers have not been sufficiently good for
a register based census
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EEA obliges Statistics Iceland to take census
Key registers are available
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National Register of Persons (NRP)
Real Estates’ register (RER) (dwelling units)
Business register (needs more work)
Tax-payer registers (need more work)
Important registers/data are (still) lacking
◦ Educational attainment
◦ Occupation
◦ Local unit (establishment)
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NRP and RER incompatible
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Create a link between the NRP and the RER
1. Link addresses
2. Allocate persons to dwelling units
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Key to successful census:
◦ Information on households (dwelling concept)
◦ Information on housing
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Create a central register of Addresses (AR)
Create a register of dwelling units attached to
the addresses in the AR (DUAR)
Replace address information in the NRP, the
RER and the BR with that of the AR
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Address code of the NRP is volatile
Meaning of certain sub-sets is no longer valid
Divergence with other datasets
◦ No other agency uses the NRP-address code
◦ Persons are not registered in dwellings, only at
street addresses
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Business register contains address
information in a non-standardised form
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Linking of addresses is relatively easy
◦ Direct match
◦ The remainder ≅ 4-5 months’ work
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Allocating persons to dwelling units is the
heavy work:
◦ Manual linking costs 6 minutes per person
◦ For a population of 320 thou.: 18 man-years
◦ Statistics Iceland doesn’t have resources
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Reduce the manual work by automatisation
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Start recording the dwelling unit and wait
Eventually all will be covered
Approximately 30% in the first two years
Good prospects for Census 2021, 80%
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Allocate families to the dwelling unit owned
by at least one member of the family
For family identification, use
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Existing family-number (spouses + children < 18)
Data on parents
Data on marriages
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Complement the list of owners of dwelling
units by list of renters:
From the Record of notarised rental agreements
By requiring big landlords to send their lists
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Look up in the 1981 census
Analyse past moving history (who moved
together)
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Simple tests in 1999:
◦ >70% could be allocated to dwelling units, using
only information from the current NRP and the RER
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Strategies listed above could add 20%-25% to
this
Remainder 5-10% would be allocated
manually: 1-2 man-years
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Difficult to wait until 2011 for starting to
manually allocate persons to dwelling units
Not all dwelling units are registered in the
RER
The NRP needs to validate the allocation
Cooperation of municipalities has not been
ensured
Public relationship campaign is needed to
counter the “Big Brother” scare
Enabling law is still missing
Funding still not ensured
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In 2011 a register based census will be taken
in Iceland
Statistics Iceland will have 2 years for after
that for processing the information
Families/persons that can’t be allocated to a
dwelling unit by that time will be imputed
some dwelling unit identifier
How well this succeeds determines the quality
of the census