Why we need to save the 2016 Census
It has been 2 weeks since the ABS dropped the bombshell that the Australian Statistician is proposing to cancel the 2016 Census. In that time there has been a lot of support for the Census, but several major commentators (including Ross Gittins of the Sydney Morning Herald) have come out in favour of replacing the Census with an annual population survey. They claim that surveys can replace the Census. The Statistician himself, David Kalisch (who has only been in the job for 3 months), is now on record as saying that the Census “is not as useful as previously thought”. This is a disturbing statement from the head of the organisation for whom the Census is the flagship statistical collection, and it demonstrates how out of touch with the users of ABS statistics he is. These commentators are all completely missing the point about Census. Here is why a survey can’t replace a Census.
The value of local information
Here are just a few things which have come out of recent training sessions I’ve done with .id’s 250 council-strong client base, which can only come from the Census.
- The City of Parramatta’s Arabic speaking population has a higher Australian-born component than the total population of Parramatta. This changed people’s perceptions of the local population and challenged some myths.
- The City of Campbelltown has the most socially diverse set of suburbs of any Local Government Area in the country, with SEIFA index of disadvantage ranging from Claymore in the bottom 1% of the nation to Macquarie Links in the top 1%. This highlights the challenges of service provision and budget allocation for the City.
- NSW residents born in India had university degree qualifications at twice the rate of the general population, challenging perceptions about Australia’s migrant population..
- The City of Melville’s most affluent suburb, Winthrop, is also its most culturally diverse, with 35% of the population speaking a language other than English at home, and this is increasing rapidly since the 2006 Census.
- The indigenous population in the City of Armadale are predominantly buying their homes with a mortgage but in 2011, more indigenous households were moving from home ownership and public rental into the private rental market. This indicates to council that a key asset of the area – housing affordability – is being eroded.
- While 63% of all households in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula held only one or two residents, and this proportion is increasing slowly over time, the increase in dwelling stock between 2006 and 2011 was mostly in larger households, with an extra 1,641 four bedroom homes over this period. This indicates a need for more diverse housing in the area, to allow older populations to downsize.
- The City of Maroondah has an emerging Burmese community, who all arrived in the area within the last 5 years (and some migration has continued since Census). The Burmese population are relatively young, and most have poor English proficiency, indicating a need for translation and support services from council to allow this community to integrate successfully.
These are just a handful of the stories which our local government clients uncover every day using data originally sourced from the Census. As you can see, many of them involve change over a 5 year period, which would be taken away from us if the 2016 Census is cancelled.
What these facts all have in common is that they relate to small areas or small population groups.
Yes, the Census could be replaced by a survey for the larger estimates of population and some characteristics – at the state and national level. This would still be quite accurate if you are interested in Australia or one of the larger states. The ABS has always been primarily focussed on producing national statistics, and the legislated requirement for the Census is to produce national and state population estimates for the distribution of electorates. The small area data produced by Census has been seen almost as a “by-product”, and this is what makes the proposal to cancel the Census so disturbing.
Because it is this small area data which is used every day to make important decisions for local governments and millions of businesses and non-profit organisations working in their local areas.
Why a sample survey can’t replace the Census
This is what we would lose if the Census moves to a survey. Even a large sample survey can’t provide small area estimates for all the population groups the Census does.
The reason is that even if you have a large enough sample size (and once you get to a large enough sample size, in the millions, you might as well run a Census), it has to be stratified correctly. ie. If you are trying to measure the characteristics of Arabic speaking mothers in Parramatta, you have to ensure that enough Arabic speaking mothers in Parramatta are included in the sample in the first place. So you have to predict the questions people will want to answer in advance and tailor your survey accordingly. This can’t happen for a national survey, which effectively means there would be a need to run a new survey every time you want to answer a local question. The Census has all this information readily available in one 5-yearly collection.
Since 2011, Australia has had rapid population growth, a mining boom and bust, a significant change in migration patterns due to government policy, and a shift in housing construction towards New South Wales. To say that we might have to wait until 2022 to get any information about these issues at the local level is asking decision makers to wait an eternity, and we have no doubt that poorer decisions will be made because of it.
There is still time to save the 2016 Census.
A final decision on the Statistician’s proposal has not been made. While apparently behind on planning, substantial testing for the 2016 Census has already been done by ABS. Radical changes were already proposed for 2016 to move the Census largely online, and to a mail-out model. If there isn’t time to implement these major changes, just fall back on the previous version, which has been tried and tested many times, most recently very successfully in 2011. Get those Census collectors out there and stop talking about cancelling the most important statistical collection we have.
As far as we can tell, the ABS has gone into hibernation and is not accepting public submissions on this (the official Census consultation process was completed in 2013 and the website still says that the results of this will be out in late 2014). But since the government will have to legislate to remove the requirement for 5 yearly Censuses, there is still time. Local Government can lobby their local federal members to vote against the plan and ensure that they hold the ABS to the current legislative requirements for 5-yearly Censuses.
Please send us your comments at the bottom of this page and tell us what losing the Census will mean for you and your organisation.
I have written to my local member Wyatt Roy MP for Longman and got no reply. Apart from voting out LNP on next election, what else can I do to stop census going way of dodo?
That’s a good start! Stay tuned to our blog, for more on our campaign to save the Census soon.
I re-read the ABS statement. All Census forms will be posted. If people do not send the form back or use internet, ABS will visit to get form filled in.
So there is a census.
See http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/2007.0main+features62016
Hi Dwight, that link comes from the Census consultation process which happened in 2012/13. That was long before the current budget cuts and current statement by the Australian Statistician that he wants to replace the Census with a sample survey.
It’s certainly true that the ABS have been looking at a mail out methodology for 2016, and if it goes ahead that’s likely the form it will take, but we’ve never seen the results of that consultation process and the ABS is now well behind on planning.
We also need a 2016 Census because we need to rebase the ERP to ensure that their intercensal estimates are correct. As we know now, the ABS was about 300,000 out last Census, and the resulting rebasing/recalibrating of the ERP was substantial. As this data is used widely we need to know the numbers are correct and if they can be substantially out over a five year period imagine what can happen over 10 years!
I also don’t know what to think of the contention that the ABS is behind in their planning of the 2016 Census. This seems to have arisen through conjecture rather than an official statement. At the 2014 APA Conference the ABS Census people gave no indication that they were behind in their planning, in fact the impression was that it was all go with the new field methodology and that they had given some thought to the pros and cons of the new approach.
I will write also. What else can we do. The thought of not having a census is preposterous. Which penny-pinching, small-minded, ignorant beaurocrazy came up with that? How can they fob us off with second-best, second-hand estimates of statistics? I have a strong Interest in the promotion, development and growth of regional Australia. No census effectively means that, down the track, no regional Australia. How can infrastructure develop? How can ANY planning be done? Any question the census answers now will then be answered with “I don’t know”.
I just sent an email to my local MP as well. I agree with Andrew’s comments above! I did point out that Census data is also used every day by organisations and businesses both large and small to make investment decisions which contribute billions to the economy, including his very own Treasury.
There are a thousand and one reasons not to cut the ABS… surely the information collected assists Australia in risk mitigation.
EVIDENCE BASED PLANNING!!
A strong, robust time-series data-set [provided by the Census] is one of the Nation’s few foils against political/corporate influence and sectional-interests in long-term strategic planning.
There is no doubt in my mind that we are loosing the capabilities [and it appears the political will], to maintain transparent, genuine evidence-based approaches to public policy.
Absurd as it sounds….It won’t be long before we hear the phrase ” commercial-in-confidence” when it comes to mid and long-range population and related projections.