IBGE has released today, at 10 am, the first results of Population Count 2007. At the same time Brazil’s Federal Register (Diário Oficial da União) is publishing a report informing population figures of all the 5,564 municipalities in the country.

At the same time Brazil’s Federal Register (Diário Oficial da União) is  publishing a report informing population figures of all the 5,564 municipalities in the country, according to Complementary Law no. 59, of December 22, 1998, and article 102 of Law no. 8443, of July 16, 1992. The IBGE report will also inform city governments about the population in their municipalities¹. Preliminary data are a result of the Population Count of Census 2007, which has interviewed over 105 million persons and visited about 34 million households all over the country. The Population Count has been conducted in 5,414 municipalities with up to 170 thousand inhabitants, and in other 21 municipalities located in 14 states, in which one or two municipalities, besides the capital, surpassed the minimum number of inhabitants, allowing the population of these states to be counted based on the results of the Population Count. Figures for population estimates in 2006 were repeated for the 129 remaining municipalities.

The results released on August 31 are still preliminary, although the data collecting process is already over. In some municipalities, a significant part of the households visited was closed or the person in the household refused to receive the census taker, which has caused trouble to the conduction of the interview. This way, from September 1 to September 12, the census takers will return to these households in order to update the population data, and this way, finish the Population Count with information about the number of persons in the household, age and sex of each person. Today, the city governments will be informed by the IBGE report about the population in their municipalities.

The final list with the population of 26 states and of the Federal District, and of the 5,564 municipalities in Brazil will be released on September 24, 2007 and, on this same day, it will undergo a new publication in the official Diary of the Union. The period of release of municipal population estimates also includes a period of 20 days for the city governments to submit possible complaints to IBGE, which will come to a proper conclusion concerning them. However, for the municipalities which still depend on the complementation of the survey, this date will be extended until October 15. Finally, on October 31, IBGE will give the final results to the Brazilian Court of Audit (TCU), which will use them as a basis for calculation of the shares related to the Municipal Participation Fund (FPM). Complementary information about sex and age of the population will be released on December 28.  

The preliminary figures of the Count may be accessed at:

www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/contagem2007/default.shtm

Census of agriculture collected information from 5,2 million establishments

The operations of Census 2007 also include data collection from the 10^th Census of Agriculture. Field activities are already over and the release of results expected to start in October. The current phase of the Census is the processing  of all the information collected. A total of 5,2 million agriculture establishments have taken found and included in the Census. An innovation in this edition of the Agriculture Census is the decentralized data collection: it allows the owner of the agricultural establishment to answer the questions even if he away from the property during IBGE’s visit. In this case, the questionnaire is transferred online from the heldhand computer from one census taker to the other, who is at a closer location to the interviewee at this given moment. Among the total number of establishments from which results have been collected all over Brazil, 58,261 are in this situation, distributed among the Regions as follows: North (2,635), Northeast (9,804), Southeast (20,479), South (11,914) and Central-West (13,429).

The Agriculture Census will present to society information about the number of establishments, overall area (ha), legal conditions of land (owned, waiting for title, leased, in partnership, occupied), land use (crops, pastures, woods and forests, irrigated area), employed persons (total, related by blood and non-related by blood), tractors, number of animals (cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, hogs and pigs, poultry) livestock production (milk, eggs, wool) and vegetation production.

Use of computers accelerates release of results

The main technological innovation of Census 2007 was the use, by field groups, of about 82 thousand PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants), which will replace the traditional paper questionnaires.  Being equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System),  they will allow the exact location of census takers in the data collection areas (census sectors),  as well as the precise figures for geographical coordinates of establishments and households of the rural area. There were several advantages in the electronic data collection, especially in terms of the speed of interviews, the processing of information received and the broadcast of results to society. For this reason, now, on August 31, it is already possible to release data about the number of inhabitants and households and of the number of agricultural establishments in the country. “Because of this technology, we have data which confirm the process of population aging, with reduction of the number of births and increase of the life expectancy of the Brazilian people. The decrease of fertility rates occurred even in the rural area”, says Eduardo Pereira Nunes, president of IBGE.

Besides its own infrastructure of 27 State Unities and 534 Municipal Agencies, IBGE has been using units spread among schools, city halls and associations, which allow census takers to unload data and transfer them to the headquarters of the institute, in Rio de Janeiro. The IBGE data collection network has 1,111 units with microcomputers and broadband internet access, among which 700 have satellite transmission. PDA’s will also be used in other surveys, such as, for example, the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD).

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¹ Rio Branco (AC), Arapiraca (AL), Maceió (AL), Manaus (AM), Macapá (AP), Imperatriz (MA), São Luís (MA), Campo Grande (MS), Dourados (MS), Cuiabá (MT), Várzea Grande (MT), Campina Grande (PB), João Pessoa (PB), Teresina (PI), Mossoró (RN), Natal (RN), Porto Velho (RO), Boa Vista (RR), Aracaju (SE), Nossa Senhora Do Socorro (SE), Palmas (TO).