INDEXING THE CENSUS - A BY-PRODUCT OF THE SIMULATION OF WHOLE POPULATIONS BY MEANS OF SAS AND SAR DATA

Amongst the new output formats adopted for the 1991 Census were the Sm all Area and Local Base Statistics tables and the Samples of Anonymise d Records. During an attempt to combine these data sources to estimate whole populations, a need was recognised for a computer algorithm to aggregate SAR data flexibly into LBS and SAS table look-alikes. This p aper is a report on progress in the development of such an algorithm, including the concomitant development of a meta-database of census tab les and variables required as an input to the algorithm. Out of this w ork a user-friendly, freely disseminable version of the census meta-da tabase has been created, of interest to all census users.