Bulgaria’s 2021 census: 5.7M counted by closing date
A total of 5 775 000 people in Bulgaria were counted in the country’s 2021 census by the October 10 closing date, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on October 12.
Of this total, 3 370 000 were counted by enumerators in the in-person stage and 2 405 000 through participating in the online phase, the NSI said.
Calculations by the NSI based on the results of the previous census, in 2011, resulted in an estimate that Bulgaria’s population was 6 916 548 as a December 31 2020.
The NSI said in its October 12 statement that it was launching two control surveys.
More than 400 officials from the institute’s statistics departments across the country would visit 14 000 homes and survey the households living in them. The sampling was done at random and the research would continue until October 31, the NSI said.
The object of the exercise is to establish the accuracy of the data on population and housing and determine the amount of errors, the institute said.
The second survey is related to the coverage of the population for the country, and its purpose is to establish the relative shares of those who had been missed, or counted twice, in the census.
Based on the data from the control surveys, the main sources of errors will be determined, which will be avoided in the next censuses of the population and housing stock, the NSI said.
The first preliminary results regarding the population of Bulgaria will be announced at the end of 2021, the NSI said.
Bulgaria’s 2021 census faced a number of problems, including technical troubles at the outset of the online phase, which the NSI blamed on malicious online attacks. These problems led to the online phase being extended from its initial planned date.
The in-person phase of the census was also extended, from its initial October 3 date to October 10. Problems included enumerators refusing to take up their posts, mainly because of concerns about the Covid-19 crisis in Bulgaria, the NSI said at the time.
(Photo: Marco Michelini/freeimages.com)
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