By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Statistics SA (Stats SA) says it has been advised by its technical experts not to release key data from the 2022 census, including figures on mortality, fertility, employment and household income.
The agency cites reporting and coverage bias for this development.
The exclusion of the data amplifies the concerns previously raised by UCT demographers about the integrity of Census 2022 and potentially hampers the work of policymakers, researchers and government departments that routinely use the information.
While the results from the 2022 South African census, released in October 2023, were adjusted for the undercount, it means the results are more estimates than counts, producing a number of anomalies in the census data. These call their usefulness into question.
A census is, primarily, as accurate a count as possible of the number of people in a country at a point in time. It attempts to describe the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the population. It also provides key benchmark estimates of fertility and mortality of the population.
Census data are also crucial for planning investment and determining the allocation of resources by both public and private sector entities. In particular, a census provides information about small area populations which is usually not available from other sources.
Decisions on where to build houses, schools, infrastructure and factories are shaped by census data.
Census data are also used as a sampling frame in other surveys. In South Africa, these include the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, national poverty lines and burden of disease studies. These surveys provide more detailed information on the country’s population, track the progress made in addressing socioeconomic disparities and provide the denominators for a large number of indicators used to track the Sustainable Development Goals.
In a technical report recently published by the South African Medical Research Council, we highlight several operational and logistical difficulties encountered in planning and running South Africa’s 2022 census.
The demographers with long experience in the analysis of census data concluded that these difficulties render the census data collected unfit for purpose. They recommended that the results be used with extreme caution in planning and resource allocation until thorough investigations are made possible by Statistics South Africa.
Pending those investigations, Stats SA was also strongly advised not to base its annual series of projected mid-year population estimates on the results of the 2022 census.
But oddly, the current Statistician-General, Risenga Maluleke, staunchly defended the census.
Stats SA has an advisory board made up of industry experts, local and international, and they had authorised the publication of the data.
The 2022 census would not be redone. “We stand by the census numbers, we are solid, we have put them through a battery of tests,” said Maluleke.
Despite past assurances of standards being met amidst a 30% undercount and criticisms, the agency now reveals, through an updated “Census 2022 in Brief” report, that it will not publish some of the initially planned data.