Register on Population Statistics

The basis for the population statistics is Statistics Greenlands Population register. Information in this register is retrieved from the Danish civil registration system (CPR).

 

Status statements relate to persons who resided in the country per January 1st. The residence criterion is described by the Danish Home Office in 'Guidance on registration of residence in population registers and civil registration'.

 

Delays in reporting

Births, deaths, movings, etc. are supposed to be reported no later than 5 days after an incident. But some reports are delayed. When calculating the statistics we take this into account and await the delayed reports. There is no time-limit for reporting or correcting information in the system.

 

Migrations

Information on each incident is reported by the municipal authority, who records information when it comes to their knowledge. Not all people who move are aware of deadlines and their duty to report. When we look at how much time elapses between an incident and when it is reported, we can see that about 60 percent of all immigration and emigration were recorded within the first week.

 

Number of days between incident and report. 2013

	Immigrants	Emigrants
90 pct.	41 days	28 days
95 pct.	83 days	64 days
99 pct.	321 days	530 days

 

To provide current statistics to our users, we only wait one calendar month after the status date.

To make it simple, migrations are counted only if there are less than 5 years (1,825 days) between the incident and reporting..

 

Information from the Danish CPR-system

The Population Statistics Register holds only selected information from the CPR system. It includes no information on a person’s attachment to the national church or his name.

The received basic information are sought for errors. Information on sex and age are derived directly from the person number, which only in isolated cases are erroneous. These errors are typically corrected within the child's first year.

The locality code is extracted from the register address information. There is generally more uncertainty associated with this information, because there are differences in how the addresses are entered in the registers. From 2009 a location code has been defined to every address, and is used unchanged in the processing and dissemination of statistics. The location code is defined by Asiaq (www.asiaq.gl) and an unofficial rule of thumb indicates that "a locality may not be further apart than one can live and have daily work within the locality."