Abstract:
Recently, other authors have raised quality concerns regarding Census 2022 with respect to the population count, age distribution, and unusual imputation. In this presentation, I try to focus on the quality of the household information. This is a harder task than assessing person demographics because there is no equivalent of vital statistics or demographic identities that demographers have at their disposal. Instead, I try to investigate the integrity of relatively stable microdata relationships in the household headship model. This model is of particular relevance because of the direct connection between the headship rate and household counts which are used to allocate government resources and calibrate household survey data. Headship rates, including those from Census 2022, are also the basis of StatsSA’s forthcoming Mid-Year Household Estimates Series. I show strong agreement between census and survey data pre-2022 regarding the headship model but divergence between the survey data and Census 2022. Specifically, the Covid-19 lockdowns are clearly detectable in the survey data but by 2022 headship returns to its pre-Covid patterns. By contrast, Census 2022 represents a path-break both with the survey data and with the pre-Covid census data. To what extent is Census 2022 different because of measurement error and to what extent is it different because of Covid-19? What does it mean if the survey and census data differ, if anything? What does this mean for using Census 2022 as a benchmark for household counts beyond 2022? These are questions I consider along with showing some suggestive evidence of measurement error in the marital status distribution.
 
About the presenter:
Amy Thornton is a post-doctoral research fellow at SALDRU. Amy uses household survey data to research households, labour markets, gender and data quality.