On the Establishment of the Population Register and the Use of Administrative Data for the Needs of State Statistics

The article discusses issues related to the use of data from administrative registration records of the population in the context of creating a unied register of the population of Russia and conducting the All-Russia population census in 2021. When choosing the main source for the initial lling of the register, it is assumed that the information it contains is adequate for the problem to be solved. This is important to predict the quality of population statistics based on the register and future census materials. For the rst time, the indicators of the routine statistical report of the FMS of Russia and the Main Directorate of Migration (MDM) are analyzed, which by their nature are close to some basic indicators of population statistics published by Rosstat. Data on the stock of registered resident population, statistics of registration (and/or deregistration) of the population at/ from the place of residence in connection with migration or birth, and death, in theory, can be compared with similar data from Rosstat. This administrative data is available in the routine statistical report of the MDM of the Ministry of Internal Affairs the «Form -1 RD». The needed indicators of Form 1-RD either were present in the report only in selected years or were not disaggregated sufficiently. It limited their comparability with Rosstat data, especially concerning the interregional migration. In many regions, population size estimates made annually by Rosstat, greatly differ from the administrative data on the stock of population registered at the place of residence. Moreover, the discrepancies can be both upward and downward. For example, the size of the «de-jure» population of Moscow was almost 3 million less than the estimates of Rosstat, while in many regions it was much larger, and this was not related to the methodology of migrant ows data collection. The number of births and the number of persons registered at a place of residence by birth, on average in Russia was similar, however, there were large discrepancies across the regions. The most considerable differences were between the statistics of deaths and information on people deregistered in connection with death (in 2015-2019, Rosstat data exceeded the registration data by almost 20%). The study allowed us to conclude that rstly it is necessary to assess the data quality before using it for population register establishment in the future, as well as for the needs of the population census in 2021. The article provides a brief historical background on the initiatives related to the creation of a population register in the USSR and the Russian Federation; it is concluded that the process was overly long and many opportunities were missed to improve demographic statistics.