2021 Preliminary Census Results

Last year, the Czech Statistical Office conducted the country's first online census.  It's amazing to me that I've been living long enough here in Czechland that this was my second census.     

The Czech Statistical Office was created back in 1969.  I was told that from 1969-1995, some statistical control was actually in the hands of local governments but as of 1996 the CZSO has complete control over statistics for the entire country.

Here are some of the preliminary results.

About half of the population, 48,2%, live in one of four regions: Prague, Central Bohemia, South Moravia, and Moravian-Silesia.  Prague has the lowest average age (41,4 years), the lowest amount of Czech citizens (86,1%) and the most university-educated people over 15 years of age (33,7%).

The national average age is 42,7 years with women slightly older than men at 44,1 and 41,2 years respectively.  For people 15 years and older, 32,1% are single and 45,6% are married.  I don't know what category the other 22,3% fall into.  Perhaps a combination of registered partnership or widowed.

Foreigners make up 4,7% of the population.  Foreigners from within the EU make up 1,5% of the population while foreigners from outside the EU, like me, account for 3,2%.  The largest group of foreigners come from Ukraine (1,4%), followed by Slovakia (0,9%) and Vietnam (0,5%).

It will be interesting to see the full results of the survey once they're available.

Here's about the 2011 census and the 2011 census results.

Czech 2021 Census

Sčítání 2021 is the national census which just began.  It runs from 27 March until 11 May.  If you don't want to deal with paper forms then you can do the whole thing online but the online submission must be completed by 9 April.  

The ČSÚ (Czech Statistical Office) anticipates that over 2/3rds of the population will complete the census online.  There are around 11.000 surveyors that will go out across the country to help those who don't have computer access.

Everyone, including foreigners, has to complete the census.  Failure to do so can result in a 10.000 Kč ($462) fine.  There will be fewer questions than last time and you can complete the census in Czech, English, German, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese or Romani.

I completed the census in English.  Once question was about your mother language.  I found it funny that English wasn't an option.  You could choose Czech, Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Vietnamese, Romani, Sign Language, or Other.  I had to choose "other" and then write the Czech word for 'English'.

English wasn't an option as a mother language

I can't believe that it's been 10 years since the last census.  It will be interesting to see how different this year's results are from the 2011 results.

To mark the occasion in Brno, the Jošt statue's shield displays the Moravian emblem.  It will be displayed until 27 April.  After that I don't know if it will go back to displaying the Pahonia in support of Belarus or not.

Displaying the Moravian eagle is in support of identity and patriotism in Moravia.  It's got nothing to do with any sort of separatist movement.  There's no call for Moravia to break away from Czechland.

2011 Census Results

Last year, the ČSÚ - Český Statistický Úřad (Czech Statistical Office) conducted the 2011 Population and Housing Census. It takes a while to compile all of the data and the final numbers will be published in Q3/2012. However, here are some of the more interesting preliminary results.

The population has increased. Yes, there is an increasing birth rate but it's mostly because there are more foreigners living in the ČR. In the last decade the number of foreigners has increased more than 260%. There are almost half a million of us here now.

The largest number of foreigners come from Ukraine, followed by Slovakia, Vietnam, Russia, Germany and Poland. The majority of foreigners live in Prague.

What Americans call "nationality", the Czechs refer to as "citizenship" and what Americans call "ethnicity", is referred to here as "nationality". So in the USA my nationality is American and my ethnicity is Mexican. But here my citizenship is American and my nationality is Mexican. Good grief this gets confusing sometimes!!

A greater number of people opted out of declaring their nationality. The largest number of people who did declare it are Czech (Bohemian) - 6.7 million. The second largest group is Moravian (522,474 people) and Slovaks came in third with 149,140. Almost twice as people claimed to be Moravian then they did 10 years ago. The vast majority live in South Moravia.

There is a big increase (46.6%) in the number of people with a university degree. Prague has the highest number of university degrees. Every fifth person in the capital has a university degree. While the number of high school dropouts has decreased there are 24.6% more people in the country who have not attended school at all.

Society is getting older. There are more people over 65 and the number of children (up to age 14) is decreasing.

Divorce is on the rise and fewer people are getting married. I've been told that under communism, it was quite often for people to get married at 18 and start having kids because this helped you get an apartment from the government. It looks like now people, who do get married, are waiting until they are older.

For the first time, same sex couples were able to state registered partnerships on the census. Since it's new there is no way to compare the data but it was declared by 2,055 people.

Fewer people answered the optional question about religion. Ten years ago, less than 1 million people skipped the question while this year 5 million chose not to answer.

The largest religious groups were the Roman Catholic Church (over 1 million), the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (+50,000) and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church (+39,000). Over 700,000 people said that they were believers but not belong to any registered churches.

I don't know if it was a massive joke or not but over 15,000 people said that Jedi (from Star Wars) was their religion. About 4,000 of them in Prague. I would think that this is a joke but there was also an increase in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, etc. So who knows??

Czech Census

Governments in most of Europe are taking a census this year. In the USA, the census is given out to only a sample of the population. However, everyone (including foreigners) had to complete the census in the ČR. I guess you can do that when there are only 10 million people.

Census officers from the Czech Statistical Office (Český Statistický Úřad, ČSÚ) had to visit every household in the country and drop off the appropriate questionnaires from 7 - 25 March. The commissioner who came to my flat spoke enough German for me to understand what I needed to do.

There are three different possible forms.
The green form is for individuals and everyone has to complete this one. It asks for basic information such as marital status, type of employment, nationality, religious affiliation, primary language, level of education and mode of transport. Since the ČR is part of the EU, there is an option under marital status for same sex registered partnerships. It's a shame that this isn't recognized in the USA.

The yellow form is for the dwelling. I had to answer questions about my flat. What floor it is on, the type of heating, how many rooms, the square meter measurements of each room, how many people live here, etc. It also wanted to know if I had an inside or outside restroom and access to the Internet.

The orange form is for the building caretaker so I didn't have to complete this form. It has questions about the type of building, its age, the materials used, sewage connections, etc.

Each form I was given had an on-line access code which allowed me to submit my forms online. All forms had to be submitted in Czech. The government had a website with instructions available in English, French, German, Polish, Romany, Russian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. The online forms were only used as a reference and didn't give side-by-side translations. For example, on the English form under religion they listed Roman Catholic as an option. But that didn't tell me what "Roman Catholic" is in Czech so when I filled in the Czech form I had to figure out that is is "Církev římskokatolická".

The due date to submit one's census was 14 April. There is a 10,000 Kč (~$610) fine for not submitting one's census forms so I made sure to complete them online before I went on vacation to Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Regular population censuses were introduced during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1753, Empress Maria Theresa ordered a regular count of the population according to sex, age and marital status.

EDIT: As of 2 May, the government received 16.8 million census forms. The majority of forms were mailed in (61.5%). Only 25.7% were submitted electronically and 12.8% were collected in person.

EDIT: Here are the preliminary results.