Impact of COVID-19 on Population and Housing Censuses: Insights from UNSD Surveys

United Nations 3rd Expert Group Meeting on the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Conducting Population and Housing Censuses and Addressing Data Quality Concerns 12-14 December 2022 New York UNSD Activities on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of population and housing censuses Meryem Demirci UN Statistics Division Statistics Division

Introduction On 11 March 2020, WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic While the magnitude/duration of the effects of the pandemic on social and economic activity in countries were unknown at that time UNSD, as secretariat for the 2020 World Programme: recognized the need to continuously monitor the impact of COVID-19 on PHCs identified some areas of concern: census timeline, budget, questionnaire, method of collection (multi-mode), quality of results (coverage, timeliness, comparability) particularly worrying was the situation of countries preparing to conduct census in the peak census years of 2020 and 2021 Statistics Division

UNSD surveys on impact of COVID-19 1st survey in March/April 2020 o 3 questions for NSOs with census in year 2020; response from 46 countries-tentative information on impact 2nd survey: UNSD-World Bank collaboration, September 2020 o included 6 questions on PHC addressed to NSOs w/ census in 2020/2021; response from 119 countries, providing more information on impact 3rd survey in December 2020/January 2021 o 11-question survey sent to 121 NSOs with census expected in year 2020 or 2021 response received from 104 countries (86%): 47 countries (2020), 57 countries (2021) 4th survey in September 2022- ongoing o targeted all countries and collected information about census implementation, the impact of the pandemic and quality measures Statistics Division

Overall impact of COVID-19 (3rd survey) 104 NSOs responded- *47 countries- census year 2020 Total number of responding countries 27% 73% *57 countries- census year 2021 Census in 2020 17% 83% Census in 2021 35% 65% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% No Yes Statistics Division

Expert Group Meetings on the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Conducting Censuses and on Data Quality Concerns 1st EGM on 9 - 12 February 2021, virtual 2nd EGM on 2-5 November 2021, virtual 3rd EGM on 12-14 December 2022-in person First two EGM attended by more than 200 experts from over forty national statistical offices, regional and international organizations participated Objectives: Monitor and document challenges in conducting censuses during the pandemic Discuss alternative solutions in designing census operations for producing relevant, timely and reliable statistics Discuss the effects of the pandemic on data quality and census measurements Statistics Division

UN Expert Group Meetings on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic Main conclusions and recommendations Impact on operations majority of countries postponed census activities or extended the enumeration period modified census procedures and data collection mode (CAWI, CATI, CASI) in order to reduce direct contact with respondents countries relying on administrative registers are also facing challenges with regard to receiving administrative records timely; raising concern about delays in dissemination of census results as scheduled recommended that before adjustments are made to the design of the enumeration modes, sufficient time be allocated for testing new processes, applications and systems Statistics Division

UN Expert Group Meetings on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic Main conclusions and recommendations Questionnaire content Deaths among household members- Countries which do not have reliable death registers, should consider collecting information on number of deaths in each household Reference period could be extended to two/three years to capture data for the pandemic period information on date of death (in terms of month and year of death) should be collected, in addition to age at death and sex, International migration- Date of arrival in terms of month and year would provide detailed information for analysis of the impact of the pandemic on mobility between countries Additional response categories for specific groups might be considered, for countries conducting the census during the pandemic, telecommuting because of Statistics Division the pandemic

UN Expert Group Meetings on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic Main conclusions and recommendations Impact on data quality data quality concerns may arise due to: o changes in the design of field operation to reduce face-to-face interview; o extension of the duration of enumeration (recall effect); o under-coverage of people living in institutional places and hard-to-count pop groups such as homeless, people living in compounds and remote areas noted that applying the concept of usual residence may be challenging during the Covid-19 pandemic as some respondents may have difficulty in remembering where they were living and how many people were residing at a given address on the census reference date (especially when the enumeration period is extended) Statistics Division

UN Expert Group Meetings on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic Main conclusions and recommendations Increased costs because of modifications in census procedures and purchasing personal protective equipment (PPEs) to minimize the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic Impact on census results and data comparability the pandemic circumstances (mobility restrictions) would have a significant influence on census results- population distribution, mortality and migration, employment/unemployment, place of work/study censuses conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic could potentially reveal trends, changes and patterns in society not seen in previous census results- o although to what extent those trends/changes would be significant are currently unclear Statistics Division

UN Expert Group Meetings on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic Main conclusions and recommendations Coordination with health authorities produce guidelines on how to prevent/mitigate COVID-19 during field operations train field staff with the procedures, including on use of PPEs and other precautionary actions develop special procedures for areas under lock-down or designated as red zones, and for institutional HH Quality assessment highlighted importance of carrying out well-designed quality assessments to understand whether PHCs conducted during the pandemic are of reasonably good quality recommended that quality assessment should be undertaken using independent data sources, such as PES and available administrative records to estimate coverage and content errors Statistics Division

UN Expert Group Meetings on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic Main conclusions and recommendations Communication with data users census data quality assessments need to be reported transparently and completely so that users are fully informed on the quality of census data (in terms of accuracy, timeliness, relevance) recommended NSOs provide detailed metadata on changes in the design, modifications in census questions, adjustments in census counts, imputation of data for non-response and other quality measurements as well as evaluation of the coherence of census results with previous census results Statistics Division

Impact of COVID-19 on the 2020 round census schedule (2015-2024) Impact of COVID-19 on 2020 round census schedule (2015-2024) 80 About 20 countries postponed again mainly due to budget limitations and security issues 70 67 62 59 60 50 47 40 30 23 22 18 18 20 15 14 12 11 9 8 8 10 7 6 0 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 Unsch. Pre COVID-19 (as of 17 Feb 2020) During COVID-19 (as of 15 Aug 2022) 238 countries/areas monitored. Only the earliest census (first census in the decade) is considered for countries that conduct more than one census per decade (eg. Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, etc). Countries that compile census statistics from registers (ie. no field operations) were not significantly affected by COVID (which is the case for several European countries in 2021).