Territorial mobility based on census data: estimation of migration flows

Abstract

The questions asked in many population censuses on place-of-residence at one or several fixed past dates allow the number of migrants during a specific period of time to be calculated. However, the questions asked in the censuses are retrospective, so that the migrants who died or emigrated abroad during the period considered are not included. There is no way of estimating the number of migrants who emigrated abroad; on the other hand, a simple method is available to estimate the number of migrants who died. In this paper this method of estimation is applied to data from the Italian censuses of 1971 and 1981.