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Is Facebook the future of the national census?
Every ten years, governments around the world conduct their national census: a count of the resident population.
- Francisca Grommé
- The Conversation
This is no easy task.
The 2011 Chinese census, for instance, was a vast operation relying on six million enumerators taking census questionnaires from door to door.
Knowledge of a population’s composition is crucial for government planning, for example in terms of investing resources in elderly care.
In some countries, it is the basis for dividing parliamentary seats over electoral…