How much internal migration does a census generate? Estimates from a small-area study in Bolivia

On November 21, 2012, a new census will be fielded in Bolivia, the first since 2001. All residents will be required to stay in their homes in order to be available to census enumerators. Since the amount of resources that each rural and urban municipality receives from the state is based on the number of inhabitants recorded in the census, maximizing that number recorded locally has become a crucial goal for municipal and community leaders. They have been demanding that every person be present in their real or de jure “home”. In some cases, they have threatened sanctions against migrants who do not return to that home. Given the high rates of internal migration in El Alto —estimates from the 2001 census show that for every migrant that leaves El Alto, five arrive— these threats suggest that the forthcoming census will trigger considerable pre- and post-census population flows. In turn, this suggests that census data on population distributions across high in- and out-migrant districts will be flawed