BURNING QUESTIONS

1: WHY A NEW CENSUS?

 There are several reasons to conduct a census in Timor-Leste in 2010, or even before, and not in 2014. There are, however, two main substantive motives:

a) The demographic dynamic of the country is characterized by extremely high fertility rates which are resulting in very rapid population growth and a quite young population structure. Even if fertility starts to decline, growth will continue being substantial because of the young age structure of the population.  Particularly significant will be the exceptional expansion of the working age population expected for the next two decades. Therefore, it is quite necessary to gain a better understanding of the demographic dynamic of the country in order to conduct more accurate population and related projections such as labor force participation, number of households, and school enrollment. At present, is not possible to identify demographic trends that may help to explain the demographic responses of the people to the huge transformations that the country is experiencing and, therefore, population forecasts are fragile.

b) At present, the occupational structure of Timor-Leste is characterized by the absolute predominance of a subsistence sector and self-employment occupations. However, the transformation that the country is experiencing is resulting in the emergence and rapid expansion of a monetary sector (modern sector), especially in urban areas. This process is widening the demand for goods and services among the population and creating many expectations that the subsistence sector will not be able to meet, most likely exerting substantial pressures on the more modern urban economy. However, even if the country experience substantial rates of economic growth in the next decades, it will never be able to absorb the enormous grow of the economically active population with the subsequent high rates of under- and unemployment. The mixture of a large young population with lack of employment opportunities is rather volatile; it is likely that the recent crisis experienced by the country is to some extent related to this explosive combination.

Hence, it is essential to have sources of relevant data for analyses on both the population dynamic of the country and a detailed characterization of the occupational structure and labor force participation. This information will be vital for planners and policy makers to generate strategies to absorb the inevitable future population growth expected for the near future and also to develop a population policy aimed at guaranteeing a sustainable equilibrium between population growth, the economy, productive employment, and the environment.

2: IS IT POSSIBLE TO MERGE A POPULATION CENSUS WITH AN AGRICULTURAL CENSUS?

A new conception of censuses has emerged recently: The General Census . It consists of merging a population and housing census with censuses of economic and agricultural units. The NSD will study the technical, logistical and economic possibility of combining next population census with an agricultural census.

The economy of Timor-Leste is characterized by a predominance of subsistence agriculture and information about the size of productive units, type of property, production, and labor utilization is vital for socioeconomic analyses and planning. Issues such as food security, socioeconomic differentiation, vulnerability, and extreme poverty can only be understood if the predominantly non-monetary component of the Timorese economy is considered

3: IMPORTANT ISSUES TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE 2010 CENSUS

The 2004 Census experience has fostered a better knowledge and understanding of the reality in Timor-Leste and suggested important issues that should be considered in the next census questionnaire. There are four essential matters in this regard:

1) The 2004 Census included the conventional questions to estimate infant and child mortality with indirect methods. The estimates obtained seem reliable. However, it is also crucial to be able to estimate adult mortality. Questions on paternal and maternal orphanhood were included in the 2004 census in order to estimate adult mortality indirectly. Nonetheless, the estimates obtained were not reliable at all since mortality rates were unrealistic high. Some countries have used questions of the type: Has any person in this household died during the past twelve months? Was that person male or female? How old was he/she? It will be vital to evaluate these experiences and to include direct questions about people who have died in a household in the next Timor-Leste census.

2) Related to the previous issue is the estimate of cause of death. It may seems a waste of resources and time to attempt to obtain information on causes of death with a census, but in countries with no information on that issue the identification of some 6 to 10 broad causes with some degree of reliability could be quite useful. The NSD is very interested in constructing and using simple questions in a census to collect data on causes of death.

3) The own-children method to estimate fertility has several advantages over Brass-type methods. The most important one is that the former provides estimates of total and age-specific fertility rates for a series of up to 14 years prior to the census while the latter only for the year previous to the census. Another advantage is that the own-children method does not require the assumption of recent constant fertility that the Brass technique entails. In addition, it is much more reliable to measure fertility differential. The main problem with the own-children method is that it requires links between children from 0 to 15 years old and their biological mothers. It would be of great interest to the NSD to discuss the experiences of countries that have included an item or question on this regard in their censuses and how reliable the estimates obtained have been. It is important to understand that Timor-Leste is the country with the highest fertility rate in the World. However, sparse evidence suggests that fertility has fluctuated substantially during the present and past decade. It would be most useful to understand fertility if a series of rates is available, and even more valuable to have these series disaggregated by geographical areas and relevant socioeconomic variables.

4) The questions included in the 2004 census questionnaire to measure labor force participation were of a conventional type. However, given the predominantly subsistence and non-monetary economy of Timor-Leste, the measurement of the economic activity of the population should be done with different questions in the next census. This seems especially the case for female labor force participation. Such questions should be able to capture the particular characteristics of the employment structure of the country and, therefore, provide information more useful for development planning in the unique context of the country. The possibility of combining the population and housing census with an agricultural census is under study (see Box 2)

4: THE CONTINUOUS CENSUS APPROACH

Some developed countries, as well as a few LDCs, are beginning to use alternative approaches for census-taking, in particular the method of continuous censuses . It seems that this new approach has several technical, economic, and administrative advantages over the conventional one. The NSD has started exploring this option in parallel with the possibility of conducting a general census (see Box 2)

The implementation of a continuous census has an important prerequisite: It requires a well-established and well-staffed administrative structure with permanent functions and with stable funding for the function of the activities of a permanent staff. This seems to be a major limitation to the possibility of conducting a continuous census in Timor-Leste.

This precondition to continuous census undertaking also requires new strategies for advocacy and resource mobilization as well as a different form of resource management. In this regard, it will be important to know the experience of countries that are implementing this new methodology. It is not easy to propose new technologies when there is a long tradition of conducting censuses in conventional ways.

It will also be useful to know the experience of countries that have adopted this methodology regarding the cost of a continuous census vis a vis a conventional one.

EXAMPLES OF ERRORS DETECTED IN THE GPS-BASED ENUMERATION PROCESS

EXAMPLE 1: This is an actual field map of an enumeration area. It is possible to see the houses. The red dots indicate enumerated households. Inside the circles are houses, but no households were enumerated. A visit to the area revealed that there houses were destroyed during the post-independence struggle in 1999.

EXAMPLE 2: Red dots are GPS waypoints without corresponding census questionnaires. After a careful research it was discovered that the questionnaires were misplaced.

Age-dependency ratio by sub-district