A BRIEF HISTORY OF POPULATION CENSUSES IN GEORGIA

Abstract

The work records a brief history of population censuses, which include Georgia and other countries of the world. It covers a fairly long period from ancient times to the modern era and testifies to the great social, economic and demographic importance of population censuses. The censuses were conducted at the early stage of civilization as part of economic statistics, and improved along with it, which is confirmed by the historical figures presented in the article. It is noteworthy that the ancient censuses had clear fiscal and military goals, in order to know the possible number of taxpayers and soldiers to be drafted into the army.
Moreover, the work describes and explains the modern principles of population censuses, which originate from the U.S in 18th century. Earlier, only a certain contingent of the population was known to have been counted, while the event of 1790 covered the entire population of the country.
By the middle of the 19th century, population censuses had become almost universal, which was facilitated by the creation of statistical bureaus separate from administrative bodies in European countries and the development of statistics as a separate discipline.
At the end of the article, official data on the population size recorded according to all general censuses conducted in Georgia are presented.