Letter to Editor Quality of 2017 Population Census of Pakistan by Age and Sex

This Letter to Editor is a supplement to the previously published article in the Journal of Official Statistics (Wazir and Goujon 2021).

In 2021, a reconstruction method using demographic analysis for assessing the quality and validity of the 2017 census data has been applied, by critically investigating the demographic changes in the intercensal period at national and provincial levels. However, at the time when the article was written, the age and sex structure of the population from the 2017 census had not yet been published, making it hard to fully appreciate the reconstruction of the national and subnational level populations.

In the meantime, detailed data have become available and offer the possibility to assess the reconstruction’s outcome more in detail. Therefore, this letter aims two-fold: (1) to analyze the quality of the age and sex distribution in the 2017 Population census of Pakistan, and (2) to compare the reconstruction by age and sex to the results of the 2017 population census. Our results reveal that the age and sex structure of the population as estimated by the 2017 census suffer from some irregularities. Our analysis by age and sex reinforces the main conclusion of previous article that the next census in Pakistan should increase in quality with an inbuild post-enumeration survey along with post-census demographic analysis.