Despite impression that the state has all data on its population, “It’s actually the opposite,” says the Professor of Sociology in Deutschlandfunk.
On 15 May 2022, Germany kicked off its census. “The census, which gathers information on population numbers categorised by age, sex and, above all, region, is necessary for planning community infrastructure such as kindergartens, schools and elderly care,” says Professor of Sociology Michaela Kreyenfeld in a Deutschlandfunk radio interview from 13 May 2022. Last conducted in 2011, the German Census will collect data from only a portion of the population, about 30 million people.
But doesn’t the state already know how many people are living in the country? To this, Kreyenfeld responds, “There is this impression that the government can pull up all this data with the press of a button. But it’s actually the opposite, especially in Germany.” The inaccuracy of data collected in the ten years between censuses became apparent when, in the official 2011 census, the previous population size was found to be off by 1.5 million people.
Read or listen to the full interview here (in German).
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Michaela Kreyenfeld, Professor of Sociology