Why do we have a Census?

The first UK census of 1801 was prompted by concerns over population growth. In 1798 Thomas Malthus published his influential treatise 'Essay on the Principle of Population'. This argued that the population was outgrowing the country's ability to feed itself. These concerns, war, food shortages and a bad harvest in 1800, led to the passing of Census Bill in Parliament and Britain's first census was taken on the 10th March 1801.

At first the census was simply concerned with counting how many people were in the country. The thinking went that if the government knew the size of the population it could establish how much food was needed. As time progressed the reasons for conducting the census changed. The emphasis moved from simply counting people to recording an ever-wider range of information that reflected changing national concerns. As the Nineteenth Century progressed interest shifted to changing occupational and household structures and Britain's increasing urbanisation. By the turn of the Twentieth Century additional concerns regarding overcrowding, fertility and the administration of the Factory Acts were reflected in the census questions. Following the end of the Second World War the census reflected an increasing interest in social questions of health, housing, transport, education and ethnicity.