A census of Malta's population and housing will be held on Sunday October 10 next year.
The National Statistics Office explained that this is a nationwide project held every 10 years to enumerate all permanent residents in Malta.
The 2021 edition will be the 18th national censuses conducted since 1842.
It will involve surveying an estimated population of around half a million living in private households and in about 250 institutional households. The population spread over 68 local councils will be evenly divided into over 1,000 enumeration areas consisting of several streets and typically an average of 220 dwellings. The enumeration areas will be assigned to about 1,000 field interviewers recruited for the Census. These will collect the data directly from the households.
For the first time, people will be able to opt to fill in a questionnaire through an online form.
Interviewers visiting the households will record information in tablet computers rather than through the traditional paper questionnaire.
The enumeration process this time round will include geocoding, which involves recording the coordinates of each dwelling and studying census results based on a 1 square km grid. This will allow a geospatial element at the analysis stage, resulting in the compilation and publication of first-ever geospatial census results by the National Statistics Office.
A theme characterising Census 2021 will be inclusiveness since the census project purports to cover all groups in the population. The salience of the theme is reflected in the choice of slogan: “Everyone Matters”.
The National Statistics Office is launching a public consultation and inviting interested persons to send their written submissions to email populationcensus.nso@gov.mt by Sunday 31 May 2020.
A preliminary report featuring the main demographic variables (among which: sex, age, nationality and citizenship) will be published in the first quarter of 2022. A detailed analysis covering all population and housing variables collected in the Census will be released in thematic publications starting from the last quarter of 2022.