Costing the Count: What’s the real cost of a Census
“Long time ago in Bethlehem….”
Way back then, it was really important to the Roman empire that everyone was numbered and represented.
Officials and rulers (Emperors) used the data to keep track of everyone, especially tax defaulters. The government has always been after our money.
The word ‘census’ originates from the Latin word ‘censere’ meaning ‘to estimate’. It finds its origins in ancient Rome which is said to have had the most developed census recorded in the ancient world.
In modern times, the United Nations has defined a Population census as “the total process of collecting, compiling, evaluating, analysing and publishing or otherwise disseminating demographic, economic and social data pertaining, at a specified time, to all persons in a country or in a well delimited part of a country”.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, or the history books if you please:
A Bit of Census/Censored History
It is interesting to note that although the Romans coined the word ‘Census’, records show that they were not the first set of people to carry out a census.
According to the Book of Numbers, the Bible tells of a time when Moses was instructed to number the Israelites he led out of Egypt. Then there was the Roman census carried out around the time of baby Jesus’ birth; his parents, Joseph and Mary, traveled all the way to Nazareth in Bethlehem. Luke describes how they were to be enumerated according to their houses and tribes, similar to what we have in some countries today.
Every census must have a purpose and in the case of the Romans, they carried out a census in order to be able to ascertain that every individual of age was being taxed appropriately. They were like, no leaks here, plug every hole — we must get our due.
From that time until now, the uses and types of census forms have changed, which is a good thing if you ask.
These days, we mainly have two common types of census forms; a Long Form that includes ALL the residents, and a Short Form that includes just a sample of residents.
Usually, when a country wants to obtain detailed information about people and households, they select just a part of the population and use a long questionnaire. The respondents selection is then based on sampling procedures to ensure that a representative population is selected.
What’s the Big Deal about a Census
In the United States, Census data directly affects how more than $400 billion per year in federal and state funding is allocated to communities for neighborhood improvements, public health, education, transportation and more.
It’s so, so important that a lot of money and time is invested in it, in POTUS words, it’s yuge.
The United States currently holds a world record — the 2010 census is on record as the most expensive census at $14.7billion! The amazing part is, the 2020 census is expected to cost double the amount i.e. $29.4 billion
Usually, there is/should be a cost doubling pattern when it comes to projecting the cost of a census. This is not quite true when projecting the cost of a census in Nigeria — at $786 million (N272 billion), it would cost almost 5 times more than it did when a census was last carried out in 2006 (N53 billion).
Kenya is currently preparing for an August 2019 census and over $180 million dollars has been put in place to conduct a hitch-free census. That’s 10 times more than the cost of the last census.
Reasons for the high cost
At a UN Symposium delivered by Statistician Lamine Diop, some of the reasons highlighted for the high cost of census in African countries include inadequate planning of census operations, lack of advanced data collection methods, among others.
But how do we bring down these costs?
Let’s take a look at the following scenario.
The Digital Cost
Now, the highest Formplus plan i.e. Unlimited, costs $45/month and gives you a chance to receive and store unlimited responses! For an extensive use case like this, let’s put the cost for the Enterprise plan at $500/per month for a 10 user account.
…xyz savings
Not everyone is on the internet, so we have to factor that in some way and that’s where offline forms and SMS forms come in.
Alternatively the census forms can be completed offline via SMS, especially in areas with little or no internet connection.
In cases where a field agent must be used, we have to factor in that cost as well. Glassdoor caps the salary of a United States Census Field rep at $15 per hour and they are expected to work for a minimum of 25 hours per week and a maximum of 40. The jobs last anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks; if we were to employ about 1,000,000 people in temporary census related jobs to work for 40 hours per week, it would cost $4.8 billion USD.
So if we have about 1,000,000 temporary census workers managed by 10,000 supervisors i.e 1 supervisor to 100 field agents, that brings the cost to about $5 million USD ($500 enterprise plan * 10,000).
If you were to implement all of these, the cost of counting a population of about 320 million (population of the United States) using 1,000,000 workers would be approximately $4.85 billion.
That is still an affordable data collection method, compared to the 2010 expenditure of $14.7 billion.
In The End…
This is no scientific study and as much as we tried to use as much real data as possible, there are still a lot of grey areas.
In the end, we’re sure you get the point— you can save a lot more money when you implement Formplus as a data collection tool. 😏
If you are from a census bureau or you just want to manage your data better, please send an mail to support@formpl.us and we’ll reach out to you.
