[ARCHIVO] President Bachelet “We have shown ourselves to be a mature country with civic responsibility”
President Michelle Bachelet visited the main building of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) this morning to evaluate the completion of the Census which took place yesterday, April 19, throughout Chile. The President, accompanied by the Economy Minister, Luis Felipe Céspedes, then made a press statement, declaring that “it was a very positive day for Chile, the whole country pulled together to ensure the success of the 2017 Census.”
Talking about her experience as a pollster she added: “I was in the district of Renca and I witnessed this commitment and positive spirit among the pollsters who came to take the Census, the heads of the local offices, the supervisors and the people in general. I think it was carried out with commitment, with solidarity, and even with anecdotes and humor.”
To people who questioned the coverage achieved, she said: “We have managed to visit the vast majority of homes; and as explained, areas that were not covered will be visited in the next few days. This is called ‘coverage recovery’.”
The importance of this Population and Housing Census is that it provides information to update and make estimates and projections about the population on a national, regional and district-wide level, in urban and rural zones, which will enable us to estimate how many people will be living in Chile in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time. It is also used to update the Master Sample Frame and its socio-economic stratification, which is used in designing household surveys to measure, for example, employment, victimization, socio-economic characterization, poverty, etc. It also gives us information about the country’s housing situation.
“This information is vital for the country to progress, because it will allow us to update our public policies, our statistics first and foremost, and from this we can draw conclusions about the public policies that are indispensable for implementing support programs, especially for people who need them the most,” said the President.
Finally, President Bachelet explained the work that is yet to come, the systematization and processing of the data: “What comes next is to collate, systematize and process the data. And we expect that in the next 8 months – in other words around December 2017 – we will be able to report the first general statistics to the public,” she said.
She added: “I also want to give special thanks, as I said yesterday, to the families who opened their doors to receive the pollsters and provide the data. We have once again shown ourselves to be a mature country with civic responsibility, and that we understand that we all need this Census so that we can all feel part of our country.”