| The final count |
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This year's big, complicated census may also be the last... A BASIC question facing any government is just how many people it is in charge of. Every tenth year since 1801 (with the exception of wartime 1941), the British state has set out to count its residents. The forms for the 2011 census began thudding onto the nation's doormats on March 8th. Yet a combination of rising costs, increasing complexity and decreasing relevance mean that this year's count may be the last.The first censuses did little more than tick off the number of people living in a particular house. As the state's responsibilities have expanded, however, so has its appetite for data, and each new census form is bulkier than the last. |
