Census of population and housing of Morocco: from decennial census to continuous census

Oussama Marseli, Haut-commissariat Au Plan, Morocco

Census of population and housing of Morocco, conducted each decade, is the most comprehensive source of demographic and socioeconomic data at the local level (i.e., communities, rural areas). Countries such as France and USA have developed revolutionary census designs to increase timeliness of results, to improve coverage and to spread ever increasing costs of undertaking censuses. Through the review of these experiences as well as the practices of sampling at the Directorate of Statistics of Morocco, this paper proposes two scenarios to conduct a continous census of Morocco. Both scenarios aim at producing annual detailed estimates for all geographical units. They differ mainly, by the adopted sampling frame. One uses sampling frame of primary units of geographical areas while the other uses a sampling frame of household addresses.