Introduction
This week’s column continues the discussion of the Bureau of Statistics (BoS) Preliminary Population and Housing Census Report for 2012. Last week’s column had focused on the intercensal population decline between 2002 and 2012. A larger intercensal population decline had been recorded between 1980 and 1991, which was the first occurrence of a decline in Guyana’s census history. In its Final Census Report for 1991 the BoS had attributed that decline to exceptional outward net emigration as no other population events were evident from the fertility, birth and death rates it analysed for this period.
The 2012 Census Report is preliminary and does not include a presentation of these demographic features. The inference is that the population decline recorded in the 2012 Preliminary Census is also due to exceptional net outward emigration. Indeed, the trend in the available data for births and deaths, visa applications, and immigration records during the years