Helping El Salvador Conduct Its First Census in 17 Years

In May 2007, El Salvador’s population and housing census counted 5,744,113 million people. The IPC International Database (IDB) estimates the population of El Salvador will top 6 million people this year.

In response to El Salvador’s request, the IPC in January 2022 initiated a USAID sponsored project to not only help that country conduct its first census in 17 years but to do so 100% digitally.

A remote planning mission held amid the COVID-19 pandemic laid the groundwork for a series of 10 subsequent in-person assistance missions.

Over a period of two years, the IPC sent expert cartographers, demographers, programmers and senior managers to San Salvador to help plan the census, provide cartographic support, and develop the census questionnaire and the data collection application.

In addition, the Census Bureau provided Spanish translations of its Select Topics in International Censuses that explained how to measure various socio-economic characteristics from education and child mortality to employment and labor market participation.

In addition to the project's typical complexities, the assistance effort was further complicated in July 2022 when El Salvador transferred its census agency’s responsibilities to the central bank.

This transition created a period of uncertainty. But later that year, the Oficina Nacional de Estadística y Censos (ONEC) was established, solidifying IPC's partnership.

Since then, the IPC has worked closely with ONEC and colleagues from the UNFPA and the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre. The goal: to support development of El Salvador's computer-assisted personal interviewing application on IPC-developed Census and Survey Processing System (CSPro) software.

In March, the IPC’s Fabián Romero and Maria Aysa Lastra found that the country’s census agency applied sound logistical and management skills to their operations during a pilot census. 

There can be challenges when Census Bureau recommendations based on international standards conflict with the census calendar set by a country.

For instance, the United Nations recommends a one-year gap between a pilot census and the actual census. That allows enough time to fix and address any issues identified during the pilot census, such as problems with data collection application, the questionnaire, cartography and the communication campaign.

However, El Salvador decided to conduct its census just two months after its pilot run.

To make this possible, the country’s census agency worked long hours to iron out application glitches, develop the monitoring dashboard and address other issues. It committed enormous resources to the effort, including acquiring 192 trucks and paying top salaries to attract qualified enumerators and supervisors.

El Salvador kicked off its census on April 30 with an impressive display of new hires and trucks. The census started on May 2 and was completed by June 26, 2024. Preliminary results are expected to be released as early as October 2024.

The IPC supports a range of census operations by providing comprehensive training to its counterparts in other countries. This training, which includes both remote assistance and in-person visits, typically last from two to four weeks.

While assisting countries, the IPC has to strike a delicate balance: fully respecting the sovereign decisions and policies of the country while still fulfilling its mission to strengthen their capacity in keeping with international best practices and U.S. Census Bureau standards.

This approach helped the IPC build trusted relationships, many of which are with countries that went on to become regional census powerhouses themselves.

By the conclusion of the global 2020 round of censuses (spanning from 2015 to 2024), the IPC’s CSPro software will have helped count nearly 1 billion people around the world, including in El Salvador.