More on Census

After yesterday's bit on the German census and the effect on city allowances....I read more on the history of the German census business.

The last real census that Germany did...was May 1987, when they declared that they had around 61 million residents.

As Germany combined both East Germany and West Germany into one.....they had some issues.  The East German government last did their census in 1981, and proclaimed around 16.7 million Germans.  Most folks anticipated in the mid-1990s.....that a census would be conducted of the 'new' Germany.  The census folks went though and developed their process, and then ran into a stonewall.

The issue?  The line of questions were a bit more than the usual, and got to be very personal in nature.  So Germans....ever frustrated over personal questions....hinted that they might not be cooperative.  The census for the 1990s?  Gone....never accomplished.

Over the past decade, the census folks went back and tried to find various ways to ask questions that would not provoke anyone.  So they reached this point by 2010, and the census was conducted in 2011.
If you looked over the old census, and consider that the birth rate is declining....with Germans leaving the country, but some new residents moving in.....the estimated population should not have been more than 78 million.  The census folks came to the end of 2011, and proclaimed the number to be roughly 80.2 million....around 1.5 million less than the accepted population prior to the census.

What complicates the general count?  Well, there is this simple German rule that when you move from one town to another....you de-register from the old town, and register at the new one.  It's done for identification purposes and to have a real count for the allowance that the town is supposed to receive for each resident.

Over these decades.....this method of going to de-register or newly-register.....was considered haphazard in nature.  There weren't computer databases in existence until the last decade.  So now, you can toss out duplicate issues where a guy didn't de-register and he's listed in two....maybe even three different towns.

Did the 2011 census answer the questions?  No.....it simply got political folks deeper into frustrated as they came to find fewer people in their city, town or village.  And less people....means less allowance of funding.