German Census

The topic came up on the news last night.  It's an interesting episode.

Back in 2011....the EU determined that Germany needed to accomplish a census.  The last one prior to that?  That's a curious part of this story....for West Germany, 1987.  For East Germany....1981.  Twenty-four years inbetween?  Yes.

Why?  German census authorities go and collect data, and in the end....that reflects upon the amount of money handed out by the federal government.  So every single census has consequences and this draws cities into court activity to sue and change the numbers.  Yeah....it's a lousy way to manage budgets but you need census numbers to agree with what the city wants as a budget package.

So no one really wants to do a census in Germany.  It just means trouble when you add up the numbers.  But in this case.....the EU demanded it.

What happened for 2011?  Two cities lost a fair amount of income.  Hamburg and Berlin.  The census said they had less people than they claimed. Both said that the census was incorrect and wanted it changed.  The court now gets dragged into this discussion.

Berlin lost 470 million Euro....Hamburg roughly 117-million Euro.  It's a big chunk of money.

Added to this....the lesser population given to both....changes their dynamics on representation in the Bundestag.

The odds of another census occurring?  If you read through everything, it's something that the German federal government would prefer to avoid. It sounds silly but it's just opening up a can of worms and making a two-year long court case out of the mess, and involving judges who have to invent a way to give fake numbers back to the cities who lost population.