Press release No. 227 of 7 May 2021
WIESBADEN – On 6 May 2021, the Bundestag approved the Federal Government's legislative proposal on testing methods of a register census in the version modified by the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community. Dr. Georg Thiel, President of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), welcomes the decision as a major step towards a census without surveys: “The needs of our data users have fundamentally changed in the last few years. Census results are needed earlier, more frequently and in a more detailed regional breakdown. The register census will allow the new requirements to be met in a low-cost, digital and low-burden way.”
For the 2022 Census, over 10 million people and all 25 million owners of real property will be surveyed, mainly online, for the last time. After that, the method, which is already based on registers, will be replaced by an entirely register-based model without additional surveys. People will then have to transmit their data to the authorities only once and will no longer be obliged to provide information themselves for reliable census results.
Many political decisions at the national and European level are based on the numbers of inhabitants from the census, for instance, the financial equalisation among the Länder, the delimitation of constituency boundaries for Bundestag elections or the distribution of seats in the European Parliament. In addition, the census results are an indispensable basis for political, administrative and economic planning. The scientific community, too, needs that important basic information. Due to the special importance of the census, changing over to a new methodology must be tested exhaustively. The Act regarding the testing of a register census will provide the legal framework for this.
According to plans of the European Union, geocoded population figures will be provided from reference year 2024 for the first time. Census results on educational attainment, labour force participation, housing stock, housing circumstances, and on families and households are to be obtained from registers from 2031 onwards.
The register census is an important building block for digital administration. Official statistics can thus provide a major contribution to modernising public registers in Germany.
