In article ,
Martin Underwood wrote:
"Michael Bell" wrote in message
...
In article , Nick Cooper
wrote:

Thank you for your last post. Very informative. You seem to be well up on
population and census matters. Let me ask you another.

If you have a good system of registering births and deaths, then strictly
speaking, you don't need a census. All the births are registered, and so
are the deaths, with the year of birth of the deceased. So your number
in each age group is simply the number born in that period less the
number died. Every time a census is done, the count got is compared to
the number calculated as above, and up to the 1991 census, the comparison
was reasonable.

But in the 1991 census, there was a shortfall of 700 000, mostly
men, and almost all 16 - 32 years old. The official explanation was that
they were in hiding from the poll tax, then only recently abolished. But
even then, there was a school of thought which said that this was
cowardice and we should face up to the fact that they had gone abroad.

The same was repeated in the 2001 census, only now the numbers have
gone up, because this phenonomenon has been going on longer, and it now
extends to older people.

What can the explanation be? They can't be dead - somebody would have
noticed over a million bodies. Some local authorities claim that it is
multiple occupation in student houses - but didn't this happen before and
some of these men are now a bit old for that kind of thing. Or, as some
claim, have they gone abroad?

What is the current thinking on this?

What an interesting question. I wonder what could have happened since 1991
that could explain such a discrepancy that wasn't there in previous
censuses. The poll tax explanation could explain the 1991 shortfall but
what incentive would there be in 2001 to avoid the census?

Yes, that is the question. It's strong evidence for the theory that they have
left the country.

I presume the comparisons are made between births/deaths in the UK and
people in the census who say they were born in the UK, so as to avoid
counting immigrants. So on the face of it, it's a fair comparison.

Yes.

I've forgotten: how much information is requested in the modern census? I
answered all the questions on mine without really remembering what they
were asking. Do they ask for place of origin? Do they ask for national
insurance number? For that matter, are NI numbers allocated at birth and
recorded on the birth certificate, or are they only allocated when people
start working? In theory, given access to all the information (Data
Protection Act permitting!) it would be possible to correlate names in the
birth/death registers against names in the census: you may not know
*which* John Smiths are missing, but you can identify how many you'd
expect for each year of birth, subtracting those of each year of birth who
have died (birth year=death year - age at death) and correlate that
against name and age on census.

I'm pretty sure no such check is made. How would you use the information?

National Health numbers are allocated at registration of birth - you might
need medical attention from day 1. National Insurance numbers are allocated
on first getting a job/paying tax, and it is a complaint of people who worry
about illegal immigration that it is too easy to "get" a National Insurance
number, and unbiased observers agree that this the truth.

When people emigrate (if that is the explanation for the shortfall) is
there any official record of that fact? If the number of UK citizens who
emigrated correlates with the shortfall, that looks a plausible
explanation.

No attempt is made to count people in and out. For many years the Irish
government tried to count ins and outs, it simply totted up the heads without
asking about nationality, but gave up when it became obvious that the results
were so inaccurate as to be useless. Airline figures are sure to be prettty
accurate, but ferry figures are pretty inaccurate, probably very inaccurate
in days gone by. It's likely that even the ferry company was unsure how many
were on board. And what shipping company would report itself for carrying
more passengers than the ship was certificated for?

I find it difficult to imagine hiding from official lists because I'm so
bloody honest that I regard it as my duty to stand up and be counted and
recorded for posterity - and genealogists! But I'm well aware that there
are a lot of people who don't think this way.

What "official list" is there? I don't think there is ONE. There is the
electoral register, which of course does not include children, but has always
included commonwealth and Irish nationals and now also EU nationals.

Then there is the council tax list, which only tries to list the person
responsible for paying the council tax.

Little effort is made to correlate these lists, there isn't the manpower to
do it.

Michael Bell






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