Census

[Gardian]

We've had a circular about the Recensement de la Population due to take place between 18th Jan and 17th Feb.

Having done a couple of stints in years past as an Enumerator in the UK Census, I'll be interested to see the format that the process takes.  I remember well having cheeky kids shouting "Senseless Census" after me on more than a few occasions!

Presumably this is nationwide and on the same dates? 

[cooperlola]

Yup, we've had the letter too.

[Clair]

[quote user="Gardian"]We've had a circular about the Recensement de la Population due to take place between 18th Jan and 17th Feb.

Having done a couple of stints in years past as an Enumerator in the UK Census, I'll be interested to see the format that the process takes.  I remember well having cheeky kids shouting "Senseless Census" after me on more than a few occasions!

Presumably this is nationwide and on the same dates? [/quote]

No it's not nationwide. Some towns/communes are selected only.

More details (in French) here: http://www.service-public.fr/actualites/

[Coco]

They did ours about this time last year and even then it isn't everyone, it's only selected households (presumably random).  In our village of 172 residents only about 6 households were "censored".

[Will]

I too have been an enumerator in Britain, and find the French census system a joke. The areas to be counted are chosen by the relevant authorities, as Clair says.

In theory it is supposed to be a rotational system so everybody gets counted eventually, but in practice the figures can be manipulated at will. As an example, Normandy's demographics showed it, quite reasonably, to be populated mainly by farmers. This bucolic image was not good enough for its rulers, so they decided that more counts should be carried out in the towns and cities than the communes below a certain size, in order to reflect the region's 'true' status as a place for sophisticated, wealthy, well-educated townies rather than us poor country bumpkins.

The official figures show up a lot of other anomalies resulting from this selective counting policy. I remember reading somewhere that France is shown in a certain set of government figures to have a considerably higher percentage of Portuguese immigrants than British - this is because the census results from one city and its surroundings in the south were interpolated across the whole of France.

I will no doubt be accused of exaggeration. Maybe, but there is truth behind these examples, which all go to prove that statistics can be used to prove anything. The British census may be flawed, but I would rather believe its results than the French ones.

[Cerise]

You're right Will - it is a joke.  The person from the village who filled ours in last year is barely literate - yet she did not want us to fill it in ourselves (we did finally) as we are  "foreign and wouldn't understand".   Some of our answers were not what she wanted them to be so she started to say "Oh we'll just put so and so ....."  Wouldn't, frankly, have put it past her to change it when she took it away.  Not that I care, but it is a bit pointless.

[Teamedup]

We did ours a couple of years ago.

[Pierre ZFP]

I got one of these letters too but I am unlikely to be 'in' when they call.  Can I fill it in and post it somewhere? Is there a fine for non-compliance as in the UK?

[Meg]

Our letter came last week and was in English. No name or anything on it was just in with the Pub leaflets so we found it a bit odd!

[Teamedup]

Yes, Pierre ZFP you fill it in and hand it into your Mairie, or at least that is what we have always done.

[cooperlola]

Form?  What form?  Ours is just a letter, saying somebody will call.[8-)]

[Pierre ZFP]

Well I'm assuming there will be a form that is supposed to be delivered into my hot sticky hand by an agent who can then say Yep, delivered that one! then come and collect it some days later.  Well they're going to have to put it in my postbox but its unlikely I will get it before 17th feb

[Teamedup]

I have no idea as to why no one called, but they didn't, and so it was popped in our letter box and I returned it to our Mairie. On ALL other occassions someone has called round and filled it in with us.

[Cassis]

Translated from the Public Service website:

January 18 : launching of the

census campaign

From Thursday 18 January 2007  INSEE is organising its census of the

population using a sample of about 9 million.

Are you listed in 2007 ?

 

If you live a commune of less than 10 000 inhabitants, refer to the heading "are you listed this year ? "(these communes carry out a census once every five

years) ;

 

If you live a commune of 10 000 inhabitants or more, you

can get information from your town hall (a sample of 8 %

of the population of the commune is listed each year).

Which are the methods of census ?

The census takers leave a household form plus an individual bulletin for each person

usually living in the household, plus an info sheet. The census taker can

help you to fill out the questionnaires and collects them. It is currently not possible to

answer the questionnaires by Internet.

Until when can you fill in your

questionnaires ?

 

If you live a commune of less than 10 000 inhabitants,

you have until Saturday February 17

 

If you live a commune of 10 000 inhabitants or more, you

have until Saturday February 24

According to the INSEE site it's obligatory to respond but there's no mention of what the penalty is.

[Teamedup]

Thanks for that Cassis,  I thought that ours was a couple of years ago and in fact it was, 2005.

[Cassis]

A bit odd that the smaller communes are done every 5 years yet those over 10,000 are only fully covered every 12.5 years?  And I wonder how they sample them?  Leaves a lot of room for Will's reported jiggery-pokery to take place.

[Teamedup]

I think what used to annoy me about these all too regular cenus is that nothing seems to get done about the dire questions they ask, ie do you have a bathroom. There are houses in this village sans salle de bains, even now. One family, 10 kids live in one, I have a good imagination but I just refuse to think of how they cope. That is just one example.

Why do these things if they can't improve people's lives, what other good reason could there be, naieve of me really, but there you go.

[Cassis]

In theory targeting areas of need is one of the purposes of the census.  In theory.  But in practice, as you say ...

[Clair]

[quote user="Teamedup"]I think what used to annoy me about these all too regular cenus is that nothing seems to get done about the dire questions they ask, ie do you have a bathroom. There are houses in this village sans salle de bains, even now. One family, 10 kids live in one, I have a good imagination but I just refuse to think of how they cope. That is just one example.Why do these things if they can't improve people's lives, what other good reason could there be, naieve of me really, but there you go.[/quote]

One of French neighbours aksed me to go with to visit his cousins who live in a farmhouse not too far. He wanted to collect the ham he'd left with them for smoking...

It was like stepping back in time: they live without electricity, heating, running water or indoor toilet.

They cook on the wood stove and an open fire for heating. The water comes from the well and they read by the fire (literally) and go to bed with the sun and rise with it too.

They're both in their late 70's and, so I'm told, have 'millions' in the bank (we're talking old money here, but all the same!)

Why do they live like this? Because they want to leave their money to their relatives and don't want anyone to say they were frivolous when they die... They told me that. Their parents did not need all this modern stuff and they don't need it either...

I am NOT saying this is the case with the family in question, but why doesn't anyone tell them about the ANAH grants?????

[Coco]

[quote user="Will "]

In theory it is supposed to be a rotational system so everybody gets counted eventually, but in practice the figures can be manipulated at will. As an example, Normandy's demographics showed it, quite reasonably, to be populated mainly by farmers. This bucolic image was not good enough for its rulers, so they decided that more counts should be carried out in the towns and cities than the communes below a certain size, in order to reflect the region's 'true' status as a place for sophisticated, wealthy, well-educated townies rather than us poor country bumpkins.

[/quote]

That's very interesting Bill because, although we are one of those small communes, when we took part last year the people who were chosen were the Maire, who also works in a notaire's office, the deputy maire who is a ventilation engineer, a single woman who is an accountant and ourselves, foreigners and B&B owners.  I think us four households are the only people in the village who are NOT farmers.

[Gardian]

Interesting.  Thanks all for the info.

Come to think of it, there was a 'suit' holding a clipboard, accompanied by a young woman, both hanging round in our little lane a couple of days ago.  If I tell you that this is a cul-de-sac and nothing, but nothing comes up here except the postie every other day (when she's got something for our neighbour - our mail goes in to the box at the bottom of the hill!), then you could believe that they were 'suspicious'.  I reckon that they were doing a recce for the old census.  Not much gets past me (!!).

If it isn't the bimbette who turns up with the form, I'll wind up Michel and tell him that the Impots were sniffing around - that'll generate some huffing and puffing!

Actually, I think I'll do that anyway, just for a bit of sport.  

[5-element]

[quote user="Teamedup"]

Why do these things if they can't improve people's lives, what other good reason could there be, naieve of me really, but there you go.

[/quote]

 

I think you know the answer to that, TU: it keeps the fonctionnaires , and fonctionnaire mentality of a whole nation going, by creating jobs. The "results" go where all the rest of the paperwork goes here: in the Great Dustbin in the Sky!

[Loiseau]

So from the genealogist's point of view, presumably the French census is nothing like as useful as the UK one - where you get regularly, each decade, a "snapshot" of who-was-where on a single night all over the country.

Angela

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Tricky one. What is going to give more useful results - continual sampling or a one-off snapshot...the UK approach does look better on first inspection, but there's very little follow-up to confirm whether the forms where filled in with accurate information or, indeed, filled in at all. I was at university with a girl who was closely involved with the 1991 census on behalf of the Dept of Health. She told me that some of the less affluent boroughs had a return rate of about 30%,  rendering the results from areas that most badly needed investment completely useless. So they disregarded them and went with locally gathered data and anecdote instead. Which rather begs the question, why bother with the time and expense in the first place?

[Will]

I worked as an enumerator in the 1981, 1991 and 2001 censuses. These were central government projects undertaken through the local authorities (District Councils) on behalf of the Office of National Statistics. I don't know where the Department of Health came in to it, unless this was a different study being undertaken in the same year.

Participation in the UK census is compulsory, and it is the responsibility of the enumerator to ensure that the forms are delivered to and collected from every household in the area - I even had to deliver a form to an apparently abandoned caravan in a car park just in case somebody was living there on the census night (as the form was untouched, and nothing else had been moved as far as I could see inside the caravan, then it was not being used by somebody sleeping rough, though it might have been. The count has to be that thorough). The enumerator is also responsible for checking the forms after collection, and revisiting the householder to resolve any omissions, errors or anomalies. And in an 8-page, 36 section form, there is quite a bit of scope for error (the 2001 form can be viewed at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pdfs/H1.pdf).

Being the sort of person who seems to attract out-of-the-ordinary tasks, for the two most recent censuses I had a 'difficult' area. Not, in my case, because it included a sink estate - which were also classed as difficult though we don't have too many of them in NW Sussex - but because of its geographical size (the areas are determined by the number of residents, so can be very large or very small) and its diversity. It included the surroundings of a large public school - the school itself was an enumeration district on its own, but I got the the teaching and ancillary staff who lived in school housing outside the 'ring fence', a lot of very large 'Country Life' style properties, plenty of farm cottages and other rural housing - and a mobile home encampment for travellers.

I actually had few problems with the travellers, though one elderly gent refused point blank to cooperate, and he was the only one where I had to call in reinforcements from the District Council who in turn were backed by the police. Having made his stand, he handed over a correctly completed form. Several others, from the large houses, also refused, but I was able to use the compromise solution, where I provided a special envelope so that they could send their forms to a remote location in order to be counted - they obviously did not want me, or the District Council, to know too much about their affairs. These were the sort of people who live behind electric security gates - say no more.

And, disappointingly, I got no Jedi warriors in my district (this was apparently the religion of choice for those who wanted to be difficult in 2001).

I mention all this to prove that the UK census is complete, comprehensive and, by not taking part (in 2001), one risked prosecution and a £1000 fine or imprisonment. There are more severe penalties for enumerators or officials who breach the confidentiality of the census. There were only 38 prosecutions in all of England and Wales for non-completion of the 2001 forms, (and since 1990 only one person has been prosecuted for unlawful disclosure of information) so I think it is pretty reliable.