The struggle developing countries face carrying census (12)

• Difficulties developing countries face carrying out a census

  • Literacy rates
  • Inaccessibility
  • A lot of languages
  • Difficult terrain
  • War zone
  • Cost
  • Distrustful of governments
  • Migration
  • Under registration
• Literacy rates


  • Sierra Leone has the lowest literacy rate in the world at just 35.1%
• Inaccessibility

  • Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands of which about 6000 are inhabited
• A lot of languages


  • Nigeria has 6 major languages and hundreds of unofficial ones
• Difficult terrain


  • Remote areas (such as mountain villages in Nepal)
• War zone


  • Ukraine which were invaded by Russia in 2022
• Cost


  The average cost of carrying out a census in the UK is £369 million (forms need to be produced, distributed, collected and collated)
• Distrustful of governments


  • Illegal Immigrants (E.g some Mexicans in the USA) may deliberately avoid census counts
• Migration


  • Nomadic people like the Bedouin Tribe in Israel move around so may be omitted from census; or counted more than once
• Under registration


  • Women may not always be included in census returns from certain Islamic countries