The Twilight of the Census

the lights are going out in census offices all over europe. the traditional central source of population information, the demographers’ rod and staff, the main source of data for planning for local authorities and central government, is being replaced by more timely alternative approaches, including population registers. in this regard, europe is the world’s demographic laboratory: the only continent where so many countries have adopted alternatives to the census (valente 2011, p.14). it is only recently that all countries in the world have even held a census. at the other end of the scale, that source of data needed so badly by the least developed countries is being replaced in the most developed ones: yet another in the growing list of “demographic transitions” in which the data of demography itself are now the subject matter. it seems natural to regard this as an inevitable result of the coming of the electronic age, of the digitization, rapid transfer, and easy linkage of data, heralding a real revolution in knowledge and things knowable. But if so, why do some of the most advanced countries on earth, including the richest and most powerful, retain their census, albeit with modifications? what may be lost, as well as gained, by this transition? and will the demographic convenience of modern methods of data-gathering come with a cost to freedom, as some fear?