Census - Residence Definitions

Residence Definitions

Individuals are normally counted within households and information is typically collected about the household structure and the housing. For this reason international documents refer to censuses of population and housing. Normally the census response is made by a household, indicating details of individuals resident there.

An important aspect of census enumerations is determining which individuals can be counted from which cannot be counted. Broadly, three definitions can be used: de facto residence; de jure residence; and, permanent residence. This is important to consider individuals who have multiple or temporary addresses. Every person should be identified uniquely as resident in one place but where they happen to be on census day, their de facto residence, may not be the best place to count them. Where an individual uses services may be more useful and this is at their usual, or de jure, residence. An individual may be represented at a permanent address, perhaps a family home for students or long term migrants.

It is necessary to have a precise definition of residence to decide whether visitors to a country should be included in the population count. This is becoming more important as students travel abroad for education for a period of several years. Other groups causing problems of enumeration are new born babies, refugees, people away on holiday, people moving home around census day, and people without a fixed address.

People having second homes because of working in another part of the country or retaining a holiday cottage are difficult to fix at a particular address sometimes causing double counting or houses being mistakenly identified as vacant. Another problem is where people use a different address at different times e.g. students living at their place of education in term time but returning to a family home during vacations or children whose parents have separated who effectively have two family homes. Census enumeration has always been based on finding people where they live as there is no systematic alternative - any list you could use to find people is derived from census activities in the first place. Recent UN guidelines provide recommendation on enumerating such complex households.