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The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in Human Rights Abuses

Social Research, Summer, 2001 by William Seltzer, Margo Anderson

Introduction

PRINCES, kings, and emperors have collected information about their populations in some form for millennia. Whether it is the biblical references to census taking, the Domesday Book, the Florentine Catasto (Herlihy, 1985), or the population counts of Chinese emperors (Spence, 1990), it is not hard to find examples of efforts by premodern rulers to determine the extent of their realms for the purpose of taxation and military conscription or to estimate of economic capacity. Yet the creation of a population data system--namely, a systematic collection of uniform, periodic information about a nation's population and its constituent elements--is largely an innovation of the modern state, since it required the development of modern administrative bureaucracy, technology, and professional expertise (Headrick, 2000).

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There is a growing literature on this historical development of census taking, statistics, and on the development of the social sciences generally (Alonso and Starr, 1986; Beaud and Prevost, 2000; Desrosieres, 1998; Patriarca, 1996). The functions of such population data systems include the traditional premodern functions of taxation, military and economic planning, and analysis. But they also include new state functions, such as the allocation of representation in democratic assemblies according to population (M. Anderson, 1988), or the provision of public health and the prevention and control of epidemic disease (Szreter, 1996), and the more general provision of "welfare" to local populations. Population data systems, in other words, whether based on administrative-reporting systems of one kind or another or direct inquires such as household sample surveys or population censuses, have come to serve critically important social, political, and humanitarian functions.

Yet such functions do not exhaust the uses of the population data systems. As many commentators have indicated, particularly in the literature on the efforts of European colonialists to control of populations in their far-flung empires (B. Anderson, 1991; Scott, 1998), there is a darker side to the development of these systems. Population data systems also permit the identification of vulnerable subpopulations within the larger population, or even the definition of entire populations as "outcasts" and a threat to the overall health of the state.

Most elementary demographic or applied statistics textbooks provide information on the range of general uses that population data systems serve. These texts, or at least the more thorough ones among them, also provide a balanced discussion of the wide range of errors associated with these population-data collection efforts. The harmful results sometimes associated with these systems are more rarely mentioned, and when treated, the discussion is usually limited to issues related to the threats to the integrity of the statistical system and its outputs, including minor challenges to confidentiality. Greater harm, however, can and has ensued. Moreover, the possibility of such misuses and the ensuing human rights abuses are often ignored in work on improving national statistical systems.

The purpose of this paper is to review the use of population data systems in human rights abuses and potential abuses and to open a discussion about the character of such abuses and their implications for the field of population analysis. Particular stress is laid on the ethical responsibilities of professionals involved in the development, preservation, and dissemination of such data.

The term "population data system" is used to cover: (a) one-time comprehensive data-gathering operations, such as regular population censuses or special censuses; (b) one-time or periodic inquiries carried out on a sample basis; or (c) comprehensive administrative-reporting systems, with or without a major statistical component, such as national population registration systems, that attempt to maintain a continuous record, including current address, for each member of the population or for well-defined population subgroups. It is sometimes argued that population registration systems, as purely administrative activities, have little to do with statistics. This position ignores the closeness that commonly exists between a national population registration system and a national statistical system.

In many countries with population registers, the national statistical office led the way in establishing the registration system or at least modernizing it. Even in those countries where the statistical office is no longer directly involved in the management of the system, the statistical office is often a major user and, almost inevitably, the principal locus within the government of expertise on the operations and content of large-scale population data systems. The term "vulnerable person(s)" as used in this paper is identical to the "potentially censurable or vulnerable entity" described by Begeer, de Vries, and Dukker (1986) as requiring special protection by the national statistical service.

The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in Human Rights Abuses

Social Research, Summer, 2001 by William Seltzer, Margo Anderson

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