At a meeting in Beersheba, Arye Aharon, head of a senior
department in the Central Bureau of Statistics, told the
press that the usual method of population and housing
computation would be changed in order to cut expenses.
Four of the Israel population and housing censuses conducted
until now involved visits of census takers to every home in
Israel, and the actual counting of the entire populace and
all of the homes in the country.
Aharon said that the census of 1995 cost the state 200
million shekels, and that the Central Bureau of Statistics
looked for a way to reduce costs. It was decided that the
next census would be conducted by means of statistical
sampling, and that the actual visiting of homes would take
place only in specified "representative" areas.
In the new method, the Bureau will process administrative
data that is collected on a regular basis and received from
various Government offices and institutions, especially the
Ministry of the Interior, which maintains national population
registry and voter registries. Census takers will not reach
every home in the country as in the past, but will visit only
a large specimen of 100 thousand homes. Only data from them
will be processed by the Bureau. At this point, the deviation
from the results of the administrative data and from the data
received from the actual visiting of the specimen population
will be computed. The administrative data will be updated in
accordance with this deviation.
Aharon noted that the new census method will save the State a
large amount of money. It will take place on an experimental
basis. He stressed that in Israel a census should be taken
every ten years.
The United Nations recommends that its member nations conduct
census polls every 5 to 10 years. There are countries which
take polls at short intervals, such as Australia which
conducts a census every five years. In other countries,
censuses are taken at broader intervals. Some countries
conduct censuses more than every ten years. One of those is
Israel, which, since the time of its establishment, has held
only four census, in 1961, 1972, 1983 and 1995.
Whether one may participate in such polls, especially with
the new method, requires halachic clarification. In the most
recent census, opinion was divided by many poskim
permitted answering the general forms if individual names
were left out. The data influences social planning and the
allocation of funds.
