TIRANA, Sept. 18, 2023 – Albania has officially commenced its 2023 Population and Housing Census, organized by the Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT).
The data collection process in the field will employ direct interviews and electronic tablets and is set to last six weeks, with preliminary results expected in June of the following year.
INSTAT said in a statement its work aims to align fully with the latest European Union regulations regarding population and housing censuses.
The 2023 Census aims to provide comprehensive data on Albania’s resident population, including demographic, social and economic characteristics. The effort marks Albania’s 12th census, with the first conducted in 1923 and the most recent in 2011.
Albania’s resident population was about 2.8 million in the 2011 census. As the country is the middle of a large emigration wave, there is a lot of interest to see how that has affected the population, with demographers guessing it could be as low as 2.4 million or as high as 2.7 in 2023.
Elsa Dhuli, head of INSTAT, stated that nearly 7,000 workers have been recruited to collect data door-to-door and to analyze it.
In compliance with census law, all residents within the territory of the Republic of Albania are obligated to respond to the census questionnaire or face hefty fines.
-Religion and ethnicity only optional questions-
Notably, only three questions related to religion and ethnicity are optional.
This has led to calls from all religious communities in the country for their members to declare their faith. The Muslim Community of Albania, the Albanian Orthodox Church and the country’s Catholic Church have called on believers to respond to the Census questions pertaining to faith.
The issue of ethnicity and religion proved contentious in the last census, with many people refusing to answer the questions as part of a nationalist campaign that ultimately led to the results being less trustworthy.
-Pandemic and other issues caused three-year delay-
The enumeration in the field will conclude at the end of October, with the entire process projected to cost 16.9 million euros.
Censuses are supposed to happen every 10 years, but the pandemic and technical challenges postponed the population registration in Albania by three years.
The 2023 Population and Housing Census will provide data on the official number of the population in a country, detailed to the smallest geographic unit, along with information on selected demographic, social and economic characteristics of the population. Similarly, it will provide the official count of all dwellings in the country, along with information on selected characteristics of dwellings.
