Editing Census (section)

==Residence definitions==
Individuals are normally counted within [[household]]s, and information is typically collected about the household structure and the housing. For this reason, international documents refer to censuses of population and housing. Normally the census response is made by a household, indicating details of individuals resident there. An important aspect of census enumerations is determining which individuals can be counted and which cannot be counted. Broadly, three definitions can be used: ''de facto'' residence; ''de jure'' residence; and permanent residence. This is important in considering individuals who have multiple or temporary addresses. Every person should be identified uniquely as a resident in one place; but the place where they happen to be on census day, their [[Home range|''de facto'' residence]], may not be the best place to count them. Where an individual uses services may be more useful, and this is at their usual residence. An individual may be recorded at a "permanent" address, which might be a family home for students or long-term migrants.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Census |url=https://www.britannica.com/science/census |access-date=2024-02-05 |website=Deezer |language=en-GB}}</ref>

A precise definition of residence is needed, to decide whether visitors to a country should be included in the population count. This is becoming more important as students travel abroad for education for a period of several years. Other groups causing problems with enumeration are newborn babies, refugees, people away on holiday, people moving home around census day, and people without a fixed address.

People with second homes, because they are working in another part of the country or have a holiday cottage, are difficult to fix at a particular address; this sometimes causes double counting or houses being mistakenly identified as vacant. Another problem is where people use a different address at different times e.g. students living at their place of education in term time but returning to a family home during vacations, or children whose parents have separated who effectively have two family homes. Census enumeration has always been based on finding people where they live, as there is no systematic alternative: any list used to find people is likely to be derived from census activities in the first place. Recent [[United Nations|UN]] guidelines provide recommendations on enumerating such complex households.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.unece.org/emerging_forms_families_households.html |title=Measurement of emerging forms of families and households |publisher=UNECE |access-date=2012-12-12 |archive-date=2012-11-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121109155201/http://www.unece.org/emerging_forms_families_households.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the census of [[agriculture]], data is collected at the agricultural holding unit. An agricultural holding is an economic unit of agricultural production under single management comprising all livestock kept and all land used wholly or partly for agricultural production purposes, without regard to title, legal form, or size. Single management may be exercised by an individual or household, jointly by two or more individuals or households, by a clan or tribe, or by a juridical person such as a corporation, cooperative, or government agency. The holding's land may consist of one or more parcels, located in one or more separate areas or one or more territorial or administrative divisions, providing the parcels share the same production means, such as labor, farm buildings, [[Machine|machinery]] or draught animals.<ref name=":1" />