Revision as of 10:42, 16 November 2009

210

Census operations ¹ usually begin with the delimitation of census areas ² and enumeration districts ³. Enumeration districts in towns and cities may consist of one or several blocks ⁴, a block being defined as a group of buildings around which it is possible to walk without crossing a street, or which are bounded by some obstacle, such as a railway line or a river. Most of the larger cities of several countries have been subdivided into statistical areas called census tracts ⁵ which may contain one or several enumeration districts.

211

Vital events ¹ may be defined as births, deaths, stillbirths, foetal deaths, marriages, adoptions, legitimations, recognitions, annulments, divorces and separations; in short all the events which have to do with an individual’s entrance into or departure from life together with changes in civil status ². Records of these events are generally called vital records ³, or registration records ³. For legal reasons vital events have, in many countries, long been the object of vital registration ⁴ or civil registration ⁴. Birth registration ⁵, marriage registration ⁷ and death registration ⁹ use special forms as birth records ⁶, marriage records ⁸ and death records ¹⁰; these are the most common types of registration documents. The person responsible for maintaining these registers is called the registrar ¹¹.

• 4. Register, n. - register, v. - registration, n.
  Civil registration systems are the descendents of parish registers (214-1) kept by the Church. A register was originally a bound book in which one or several lines were devoted to an event Today individual records often take the form of certificates. They are separate documents for each recorded vital event.

212

Vital statistics ¹ or registration statistics ¹ are obtained by processing the registration record or a statistical report ² established at the time of registration. Tabulations by place of residence ³ of the mother or of the decedent are often regarded as more useful for demographic purposes than tabulations by place of occurrence.

• 3. In many countries, the time of registration of a birth may be markedly later than the time of occurrence.

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The registers mentioned in a preceding paragraph (cf. 211-4) are distinct from the population registers ¹ of those countries which possess a system of continuous registration ². In these registers every member of the population or every family may be represented by a card ³, and the register is maintained ⁴ or updated ⁴ through information which reaches it through the local registration offices and \ through registration of any changes of residence ⁵ (cf. 310-6). It is usually matched ⁶ with the census results and brought up to date at regular intervals by special checks ⁷.

• 3. A card file is a collection of cards. In general, a file is a collection of records arranged in convenient order.

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Historical demography (102-1) often uses documents which precede or anticipate the development of civil registration (211-4) and nominal lists (207-3) from censuses. Parish registers ¹ or parochial registers ¹ contain information on the religious equivalents of vital events such as baptisms ², religious marriages (503-2), and burials ³. For chrisoms ⁵, privately baptized infants who die at home prior to a formal church ceremony, only the burial record is available. Nominal lists contain information either on a portion of the population or more rarely on the whole population. They include the a status animarum ⁶which are nominal lists of all parishioners, lists of communicants ⁷ and confirmation lists ⁸, as well as administrative and fiscal documents such as hearth tax lists ⁹, taxation rolls ¹⁰ and military conscription lists ¹¹.

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Data are extracted from parish registers with the help of several types of forms ¹ or slips ¹ . These include the baptism slip ², marriage slip ³ and burial slip ⁴. The names of the subjects of record ⁵ (i.e. the persons being baptized, buried or getting married) are inscribed on these slips, and information is recorded about the parents and other persons such as the godfather ⁶, the godmother ⁷ and the witnesses ⁸. Other transcription forms ¹¹ are also used for summary extraction of the data, either with or without the names of the subjects. Family re-constitution (638-2) makes use of family reconstitution forms (638-1). When genealogies ¹² reconstitute the descendance of an individual or a family, they are under certain conditions a valuable source of information on the demographic characteristics of the upper classes.