At 21:51 18/11/2007 +0000, Martin Rathfelder wrote:
>That is the crucial information. What is required if we want a 100%
>census - and I must say I have sympathy with those who question its
>usefulness - or even a properly structured sample is a comprehensive
>population. At present we know exactly nothing about the addresses which
>do not respond. In particular we don't know if they are inhabited. So we
>have no way of imputing characteristics to those who do not respond, other
>than by assuming that they are like the people who do respond, which seems
>very unlikely. And the threat to prosecute people who don't respond is
>empty because we don't know if there was anyone there who should have
>responded. But it is easy to get at landowners. And as we have such high
>levels of ownership in the UK
>quite a lot of those who don't respond will be owners. And many of the
>non-responding addresses are owned by local authorities and housing
>associations who have incentives to cooperate.
In terms of what has been suggested, I am told (correctly or otherwise)
that a rather surprising proportion of UK property remains unregistered - I
presume mainly that which has stayed in the same family for very many decades.
However, one group of organisations with a vested interest in some
'occupancy' information may have been overlooked - namely local
authorities, who collected Council Tax. Every inhabitable residential
property in the UK is, with few exceptions, potentially taxable - and even
if it is occupied solely by tax-exempt people (e.g. students), that
information should be known. Such authorities have a keen interest in
knowing whether each and every property in their area is (a) inhabitable
and, if the answer is 'yes', whether it is occupied by zero, one or more
than one individual - and have been known to do quite a lot of
'investigating' in order to get answers to those questions. Whilst such
information is obviously of limited value in relation tot he Census, it
might at least afford an aid to those addressing the question of Census
non-response.
Those who organise and run the UK Census are far from stupid. I therefore
assume that they have already thought of, and in many cases acted upon, all
of the 'ideas' discussed in this thread, and probably many more that
Radstats members haven't even thought of yet!!
Kind Regards,
John
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