Statistical internationalism: From Quetelet's census uniformity to Kish's cross-national sample survey comparability

Abstract

Cross-national comparability of census data as uniformity was intensely debated from the First International Statistical Congress (ISC), held in Brussels at Quetelet's initiative in 1853, until an agreement was reached at the Eighth ISC, in St. Petersburg, in 1872. However, not much progress was made until the last half of the twentieth century, when the Statistical Commission of the United Nations issued the first set of principles and recommendations for the national population censuses in 1958. In this paper, the progress of statistical internationalism is investigated from Quetelet's vision of census data uniformity and the first international decision to conduct decennial censuses directed at the actual population to Kish's definition of cross- national sample survey comparability. The presentation is based on the detailed documentation of the Integrated Public Use Mictodata Series (IPUMS)-International. As this database is comprised of samples drawn from censuses, it relates to this first international decision on census data comparability.