Population and Housing Census 2005

Starting in year 2005, Peru’s National Institute of Statistics is implementing a new methodology for its national population and housing censuses. This consists mainly in carrying out a universal headcount every 10 years with basic questions on demographic characteristics and living conditions, together with a continuous household survey throughout the decade in which more detailed data will be obtain from a national sample of households. This sample will include approximately 300,000 households yearly. This survey will provide a permanently updated database with information that currently was being obtained only once in about ten years.

Year 2005 population and housing censuses began with a universal headcount that lasted little over a month, starting 18th of July and ending on the 20th of August, as a de jure procedure, and the first results will be available at the end of November, 2005. This has covered around 27 million persons, which is Peru’s estimated population at present, and the housing questions covered approximately 7 million homes, which is the estimated quantity of Peru’s households at present. Thus, each individual and each set of living quarters have been enumerated separately and the characteristics thereof have been separately recorded, complying with the first essential feature of population and housing censuses -- individual enumeration -- by means of the collection of information in the field.