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Overview

Overview

The census is one of the main sources of information about population and social structure. It provides counts of population, both overall and by sub-group, which are interesting in themselves.

However, when combined with information on births, deaths and marriages from sources such as civil registers, these counts also allow the calculation of demographic rates. Individual level records, where available, provide information for each person in each household, and arguably offer the most potential for interesting research. These records allow the investigation of household structure and family formation, as there are ways of using this information to estimate fertility rates by age of mother. Information on birthplaces allows certain measures of migration to be generated, and these sorts of measures can be calculated for many different sub-groups to uncover complex patterns.

Censuses in the UK have been taken every tenth year (with the exception of 1941) since 1801. However the first few censuses did not enumerate each person separately, or collected only very general information, so they are not so useful for detailed demographic analysis and the projects detailed here do not use census data prior to 1851. Confidentiality laws restrict access to individual level census data until 100 years have passed, so the most recent census used in these projects is currently the 1911 census.