MINELRES: Final Results of 2004 Moldovan Census Made Public

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Original sender: Ionas Aurelian Rus <rus@polisci.rutgers.edu>


http://www.azi.md/print/38835/En

April 11 2006

Final Results of 2004 Census Made Public

The Republic of Moldova [its Transnistrian region exclusive] is home to
3.4 people. Such is one of the main findings of the national census held
here on October 5 through 12, 2004, the National Bureau of Statistics
has reported. The previous such census took place here in 1989, when
Moldova was yet one of the Soviet Union's 15 republics.

Ethnic Moldovans constituted 75.8% of the country's population (up 5.9%
against the 1989 composition), ethnic Ukrainians - 8.4%, Russians 5.9%,
Gagauzes 4.4%.

58% citizens stated the language they speak is Moldovan, 16% said the
language is Romanian, and only 2.2% of the country's population stated
they are ethnic Romanians, not Moldovans. 16% citizens said their native
language is Russian, 3.8% -- Ukrainian, 3.1% Gagauzian, and 1.1 percent
- Bulgarian.

99.6% of the interviewed people turned out to be Republic of Moldova
citizens, 6.5 thousand people were citizens of other countries, 5.4
thousand had no citizenship, and 12.7 thousand had dual citizenship.

In October 2004, 58.8% of the Moldovan citizens were married people - up
10% against the 1989 statistics, 4.2% were officially divorced persons,
and 1.2% - unofficially divorced. The number of divorced women is twice
higher than of divorced men, and the proportion of bachelors and
divorced men is substantially higher in cities than in rural localities.

Each 4th Moldovan woman has never given birth to a baby, 20.2% have one
child, 30.3% have two children, 13.2% - three children, 4.9% - four, and
5.4% have five and more children.

In October 2004, Moldova had 97 citizens aged one hundred years and
older, of whom 85 were women. The average statistical age of the
Moldovan population was then 35.3 years, or 3.5 years higher than in
1989.

At the census period, 273 thousand citizens of Moldova were staying
abroad, of whom 130 thousand Moldovans were absent from the native land
for months and even years, earning their living, receiving higher
education, etc.

Each 5th citizen of Moldova resides in the capital city - Chisinau.
Gagauz Yeri autonomous region is home to 4.6% of the total population,
and Balti city - to 3.8%. The least populated administrative units are
the Basarabeasca raion (29 thousand people), Dubossary raion (34
thousand), Soldanesti raion (42 thousand), and Taraklia raion (43
thousand).

The 2004 census covered 93.1% of the Republic of Moldova population
(Transnistria exclusive). That undertaking was funded from the means the
National Bureau of Statistics had received from the country's State
Budget (30 million lei), from the Swedish International Development
Agency (SIDA, 4.4 million lei), and the Department for International
Development (DFID) of Great Britain (4.4 million lei).

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Copyright �1998-2002 Moldova Azi


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Moldovan_Census#endnote_census-experts

2004 Moldovan Census
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 2004 Republic of Moldova Census was carried October 5�October 12,
2004. The separatist Transnistria failed to come into an agreement with
the Chisinau government and carried out its census during November 11 �
November 18; the results of the Transnistrian census are questioned.

The Republic of Moldova's previous census was performed in 1989, when
the territory was part of the Soviet Union.

The census was delayed several times and had difficulties because of
political problems, ethnic tensions and a lack of resources.


Census problems

According to a May 19, 2005 article carried by the Moldova Azi news
agency[1], a group of international census experts described the
Moldovan census as "generally conducted in a professional manner", while
remarking that that "a few topics� were potentially more problematic".
Among the problematic topics:

The census includes at least some Moldovans who had been living abroad
over one year at the time of the census.

The entries referring to the nationality and spoken language created
confusion among the respondents. 
Therefore, the precision of numbers about nationality/ethnicity and
language was questioned. Some enumerators apparently encouraged
respondents to declare that they were "Moldovan" rather than "Romanian",
and even within a single family there may have been confusion about
these terms.

With respect to these matters, especially the latter, the expert group
recommended that the Moldovan National Bureau of Statistics carry out an
evaluation study, offered their assistance in doing so, and indicated
their intention of further studying the matter themselves.

Vitalie Valcov (the then director of the Department of Statistics and
Sociology) stated that Transnistria did not comply with the
international recommendations for carrying out a census and, thus, the
data collected in Transnistria � where almost 17% of Moldova�s
population live � may not be taken considered in common with the other
data, since it was gathered out without international monitoring.

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MOLDOVA AZI > SOCIAL > NEWS
http://www.azi.md/news?ID=34282

May 19 2005

Experts Offering to Consult the National Statistics Bureau in Evaluation
of the Census Data

The group of experts from the international census observation Mission
to the Republic of Moldova welcomed publication, by the National
Statistics Bureau, of the new set of preliminary data regarding the 2004
population census, according to the census' data publication schedule.

In a press statement broadcasted on Wednesday, May 18, the group of
experts reiterated its earlier conclusions, made on the grounds of
reports of teams of international observers, that "the census had been
generally conducted in a professional manner", but consider that "there
were a few topics in the census that were potentially more problematic".

Thus, the expert group has noted that the National Bureau of Statistics
has indicated in its press release that the total population size of the
country is 3,388,071. The group considers that that figure may actually
be somewhat higher than the real population size of the country because
that figure includes at least some Moldovans who had been living abroad
over one year at the time of the census and who had been enumerated in
the census. According to the international standards for censuses, these
individuals should not have been included in the count of the total
population size of the country, and therefore the total population
estimated in the census would be somewhat smaller if the international
census standards had been fully complied with in this regard. However,
it should also be noted that some undercount of the population can also
be expected in any census operations, and that this might reduce the
effect of the above-mentioned overcount.

The expert group concluded that the items in the questionnaire dealing
with nationality and language proved to be the most sensitive ones,
particularly with reference to the recording of responses to these
questions as being "Moldovan" or "Romanian", and therefore it concluded
that special care would need to be taken in using them. This was because
although reports from the field had showed that a large proportion of
respondents had spontaneously provided answers to these questions, seven
of the ten teams of observers had reported cases where enumerators
encouraged respondents to declare that they were Moldovan rather than
Romanian. Moreover, the reports from the field also showed that even
within the same family there often seemed to be some confusion about
these terms. Since problems of this type had been reported by the teams
of observers in many different parts of the country, and in fairly large
number, the expert group concluded that special care would be required
by the National Statistics Bureau to enable it to assess the quality of
the data on nationality/ethnicity.

The data showing the composition of the population by
nationality/ethnicity that the National Statistics Bureau released today
provides the preliminary counts that were obtained from the census for
this topic, but it does not provide any assessment of the overall
quality of the data or whether the results obtained for some of the
groups might be somewhat inflated or deflated. The Expert Group strongly
recommends that the National Bureau of Statistics proceed and carry out
such an assessment as part of its overall evaluation of the census,
after the final results from the census are released. Such evaluation
studies are carried out routinely by national statistical offices after
all censuses, and it is particularly important that they be carried out
in cases like this where there appears to be reason to believe that
greater caution should be exercised by all users in interpreting and
using the data for some of the census topics.

For its part, the expert group will also attempt to assess the data by
nationality/ethnicity in the further stages of its work, as well as the
data for some other sensitive topics. It should be noted, however, that
any assessments that will be carried out by the expert group cannot
replace the ones that the National Statistics Bureau will be conducting,
for those assessments and evaluations are part of the National Bureau of
Statistics's regular statistical work programme. However, to the extent
that resources available to it will permit, the Expert Group remains
willing to advise and assist the National Bureau of Statistics in
carrying out the required types of assessments.

The expert group has not yet completed its work on the assessment of the
census as a whole. It has started its work by checking the data on the
total population counts, and it has also checked a sample of the
questionnaires, and no irregularities have been found. The expert group
will shortly turn its attention to checking the data processing
procedures, and towards the end of the project it will produce its final
report, AP FLUX also informs.

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Copyright �1998-2002 Moldova
Azi

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