Assessing the 2017 Census of Pakistan Using Demographic Analysis: A Sub-National Perspective

In 2017, Pakistan implemented a long-awaited population census since the last one conducted in 1998. However, several experts are contesting the validity of the census data at the sub-national level, in the absence of a post-enumeration survey. We propose in this paper to use demographic analysis to assess the quality of the 2017 census at the subnational level, using the 1998 census data and all available intercensal surveys. Applying the cohort-component method of population projection, we subject each six first-level subnational entities for which data are available to estimates regarding the level of fertility, mortality, international, and internal migration. We arrive at similar results as the census at the national level: an estimated 212.4 million compared to 207.7 million counted (2.3% difference). However, we found more variations at the sub-national level.