Statistical Journal of the IAOS

Household income statistics produced by the V.S. Census Bureau have traditionally been based on a calendar-year, pre-tax, post-transfer income measure. This definition has three major weak points: (1) it fails to account for the effect of government non-cash programmes which provide medical, housing and food assistance; (2) it fails to reflect the effect of income and payroll taxes on the distribution of income; and (3) it fails to include private sector non-cash benefits, such as employer–provided health insurance.

This paper describes efforts at the Census Bureau over the last ten years to expand the definition of income beyond the original pre-tax, post-transfer concept. This effort began with a series of exploratory reports that focused on the effect of government non-cash benefits on the number of families and persons living in poverty. A second series of studies examined the effect of taxes on the distribution of income. Research efforts were expanded and integrated in the late-1980s to create a new series of reports that have provided a comprehensive picture of the effect of taxes and non-cash benefits on income distributional measures and the prevalence of poverty. The annual release of these estimates is now a permanent part of the Census Bureau's statistical programme.

Progressive deterioration of natural environment in Poland, territorial differentiation of our country and, simultaneously, limited financial means which could be allocated to environment makes it necessary to define a detailed strategy for work in this field.

Environmental statistics providing indicators and categories for analysing and evaluating the status of various elements of the environment, allows to elaborate a territorial synthesis and a division of the country in terms of ecological criteria.

With regard to the above circumstances, regions of concentration of environmental violations and hazards were distinguished. Degradation is so advanced there and only intensive pro-ecological activity could stop its further progress. These regions were named “areas of ecological hazards”.

Taking into consideration ecological criteria, completing of diagnostic estimations of territorial differentiation in the state of the environment constitutes the delimitation of urban agglomerations and industrial districts.

The goal of the statistical programme reviewed here was to describe the growth and status of the sports sector and to supply data for policy makers for formulating national objectives. The data is useful for evaluating the results of policies pursued from time to time and, if necessary, for correcting them.

The overall involvement in sports was high in terms of frequency rates of participation for a cross-section of the population. However, sports practices differ widely among different groups of the population despite large-scale public funding of activities and the provision of facilities. Participation rates are significantly higher for high-income earners and for people with high levels of education and professional status. Furthermore, the statistics confirm that parents practicing sports influence children to adopt sports as a form of leisure activity rather than other activities such as playing musical instruments.

The statistical challenges ahead are twofold. First, to define adequately the social goals of achievement and to establish methods of valuation of sports in terms of the social concept of the wealth of the nation. Second, to establish common standards of classification for compiling and presenting sports statistics, so that they are internationally comparable.

When using population forecasts it is important to take into account the degree of uncertainty of the results. For that reason the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics publishes low and high variants next to the most probable medium variant. In the low variant fertility and net immigration are low and mortality is high. In the high variant the opposite applies. The width of the interval between the variants is based on an analysis of previous forecast errors. The degree of uncertainty of the various forecast results turns out to vary strongly. The low and high variants are based on the same deterministic cohort-component model that is used for the medium variant. Hence the probability that the interval between the variants covers the true value is unknown. On the basis of a statistical time-series model of forecast errors of total population growth, a confidence interval of total population size can be estimated.

While the results of the numerous censuses have traditionally been published and recorded in the statistical database of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) now all interested parties active in the area of politics, administration, commerce, research, societies and institutions, and all citizens have been able to obtain comprehensive data on a novel medium, the CD Statistik. This is a CD-ROM which contains data and information from the official statistical records of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The use of computers for providing geographical support to survey operations has increased dramatically with the introduction of geographic Information Systems. In this paper we review the application of such systems at Statistics Canada in support of the Canadian national statistical program. Current research efforts are described, including plans to extend cooperation to the international level in order to harmonize the geographical concepts used in statistics, and to enable international comparisons of data and information.