Census sample to be cut in 2006
Officials say the move to lower costs will not compromise the official headcount
A mini-census planned for 2006 will sample fewer people than usual to save costs, in a move that officials said will bring Hong Kong in line with international trends.
The sample of people surveyed will drop from one in seven citizens to one in 10. A veteran pollster agreed with the move to bring the headcount for the by-census closer to practices in other countries.
The by-census is held every 10 years, five years after each full census.
The Commissioner for Census and Statistics, Frederick Ho Wing-huen, yesterday said the move to reduce the sampling size was part of the drive to cut spending. Members of the Statistics Advisory Board have accepted the proposal, saying the impact on the quality of the census was 'acceptable'.
A government spokeswoman could not state the amount which would be saved. Hong Kong's population is more than 6.8 million.
Mr Ho said: 'The key strength of the population by-census lies in its scale, since information is collected from a very large sample. Apart from providing benchmark population data for the compilation of population estimates, the population by-census is a highly reliable source of information on small geographic areas and on population sub-groups.'
Topics to be covered in the 2006 count would follow those in the 2001 census, the department said.
Timothy Wong Ka-ying, a veteran pollster at the Chinese University, said the impact would be minimal as similar polls carried out in foreign countries would sometimes take an even smaller sample of about one in 20 citizens.
'The main utility of a by-census is to monitor general social trends and the reduction of a few hundred thousand people is not much of a difference,' Dr Wong said.
Meanwhile, an information database for studies related to Hong Kong, Macau and the Pearl River Delta has been developed jointly by the Census and Statistics Department and the Planning Department. The database aims to provide relevant statistical data and reference materials in support of studies related to the three areas.
