Le recensement italien de la population en 2011

A population and housing census is taken in Italy every ten years since 1861. Last census was taken in 2001, based on the conventional methodology of complete field enumeration. Census forms were delivered and collected by enumerators and self-filled in by respondents, and all information was collected and processed on a complete basis. Among the main goals of census enumeration are the determination of the legal population (i.e. the population usually resident in private and conventional households), the collection of information on the main demographic and socio-economic characteristics, the comparison between census data and the municipal population registers (/Anagrafi/). Indeed, the law on population registers (/Regolamento Anagrafico/) establishes the update of population registers on the basis of census results. Furthermore, the municipalities (/communes/) are in charge of the field-work and, in most cases, contribute with their own financial resources to the state allocated budget. The planning of next census has taken into consideration the need of reducing the municipalities workload and the burden on respondents by making a larger use of administrative data, traditionally used by municipalities during the enumeration phase with coverage improvement purposes (/register improved/ census). In the new strategy, a /register assisted/ census will instead be implemented, by means of questionnaires’ /mail out /to the households registered into the municipal population archives. Self-completed questionnaires will then be collected by a mixed mode system which will include /mail back/, Internet and, finally, intervention on late respondents by enumerators. Two questionnaires will be used: a /short form/ for collecting some basic demographic variables and a /long form/, to be filled in by a sample of households, including the basic questions plus all the other socio-economic questions. Two alternative ways have been considered in order to enumerate population not included in registers but actually residing in the municipality:
1) a labour intensive intervention by enumerators at every dwelling where a usually resident person is expected to be found on the basis of auxiliary sources; 2) a sample control survey to be carried out during the standard data collection phase, with the purpose of estimating the number of units missed by the administrative archives by means of a /capture-recapture/analysis. Both approaches have pros and cons. The new strategy is conceived as a set of modules, to be applied flexibly according to the size of the municipality. In the paper a description of the main innovations will be provided, and the main challenges for the census itself and, more generally, for the statistical system will be discussed.